Ready or Not: Facebook Timeline’s Here to Stay

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

The announcement this Tuesday that Facebook’s new Timeline will be mandatory for all users over “the next few weeks” has the media busy commenting about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Ever since the Timeline was made available worldwide, back in mid-December, users have been vocal about their complaints. A quick Facebook search on “Facebook Timeline” brings up dozens of “I Hate the Facebook Timeline” groups, housed, ironically enough, on Facebook itself. The numbers of these hater groups range from the several thousands to a mere handful, but clearly there’s a lot of dissatisfaction out there. This is borne out in Computer World’s “Facebook Timeline – Your Complete Guide,” which cited that, in a poll of more than 800 people, “88% responded that they dislike the new profile design.”

(Though, to be fair, there were plenty of vocal haters with any change to the Facebook interface – a whole lot of people  simply don’t appreciate change, a fact most application and social media developers tend to willfully ignore.)

Rebecca Greenfield’s article, which appeared in The Atlantic Wire on December 15, 2011, “Everything You’ll Hate About the New Facebook Timeline” was quick to list many of Timeline’s negatives: too many photos, nothing is in the right order, too much work to set it up. Because her piece was published early on, Ms. Greenfield missed one major complaint of Facebook users who hopped on the opportunity to “try it out” before the Timeline became mandatory – once you did, there was no reset button to go back to the regular profile.

The lack of privacy is among the top complaints of users – particularly with the introduction of some 60 new “frictionless” apps, developed to publicize more of the users’ activities to their friends. According to the Huffington Post’s article, “Facebook Timeline Becoming Mandatory for All Users:”

‘Frictionless’ apps are so named because they do not require the user to take any action in order for the app to share its information to Facebook — the sharing occurs automatically and instantaneously after you give the app permission to do so.” For example, if the user reads a story via the Washington Post’s social app, and has granted that app access to the Timeline, that story will appear in the user’s news ticker and will be posted to his or her Timeline for friends to see.

The article continues by stating that users should avail themselves of the new privacy settings to restrict their sharing by these new apps. And with more employers using social networks such as Facebook to locate employees – nearly 90%, according to a Forbes article, “More Employers Using Social Media to Hunt for Talent” – this is undoubtedly an important step to take.

There are a lot of articles out there that give you good advice about how to set up your now-inevitable Facebook Timeline. Some of the good ones are the aforementioned Computer World “Facebook Timeline – Your Complete Guide,” Mashable’s “Facebook Timeline: The Complete Guide,” Boston.com’s step-by-step slideshow, “Take the time to curate Facebook Timeline,” and, of course, Facebook’s own, “Introducing Timeline.”

And, one last note. As a “curator” (Facebook’s term, not mine) of a number of brand pages, I wonder at the decision to hold off on using the Timeline on pages. According to Mashable’s Todd Wasserman:

The social networking giant isn’t letting brands create Timeline pages just yet and hasn’t given a date on when that will happen. “We are currently focused on Timeline for individuals and will consider how to make consistent experiences for Pages,” says a Facebook rep, “but we have nothing to announce at this time.”

In his article, “No Timeline Pages for Brands Yet, Facebook Says,” Wasserman shows several examples of how the Facebook timeline would transform brand pages, created by brand agencies. Clearly, this is one opportunity that page “curators” will be delighted to adopt – and it’s odd that Facebook is so focused on the personal that they have lost sight of a perfect opportunity to gain more “likes.”

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iMedia Welcomes Jagdish Narkar

Posted on January 24, 2012 by

Jagdeesh NarkarJagdish Narkar comes to iMedia from a leading online advertising agency, where he worked with many of iMedia’s current team members. A skilled .Net, Web and Windows developer with more than ten years of experience, he previously worked at Adverb Media and Thompson Learning in the US, as well as LearningMate, Mentorix Learning Technologies, and Aptech in his native India. While employed by Mentorix, he worked for Microsoft India as a consultant.

Jagdish has worked on a wide variety of development projects throughout his career. Most recently, he created the sophisticated web spidering tools. He also developed a Link Building Database tool to help SEO experts manage their targets and a blog search engine that reports and analyzes daily activity in the blogosphere.

When not working on a project or keeping an eye on technical blogs, Jagdish loves to play cricket and basketball. He is also an avid sports fan, especially of the NBA’s Lakers and the NFL’s Giants, and particularly enjoys watching their games with his four year-old son.

The entire team is delighted to welcome Jagdish to iMedia!

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So, Did the Blackout Succeed? Oh, Yes.

Posted on January 19, 2012 by

In Tuesday’s blog post, “Do Your Homework Early,” we previewed Wikipedia’s plans to black out their site for 24 hours to protest two Congressional bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Wikipedia was joined in the protest by an unprecedented 7,000 websites – including Google, Facebook, Mozilla, and WordPress – and the results were staggering.

The Mail Online summarized these results at the top of their article, including:

  • 18 senators withdraw support for controversial bills
  • Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg opposes censorship law
  • And says internet is ‘powerful tool for creating open and connected world’
  • 7,000 sites across the net joined protest
  • Founder Jimmy Wales calls the strike an ‘extraordinary action’
  • Hollywood movie moguls stop donations for Obama re-election campaign
  • Studio chiefs’ move in protest against his ‘lack of support’ for the two bills
  • Twitter exposes ‘morons’ who didn’t know why Wikipedia was shut down

The Mail also publshed a comprehensive list of some of the major sites that were either entirely blacked out, such as Wikipedia and Reddit, or which featured the protest on their live pages, including Google’s black patch and WordPress’s homepage filled with “Censored Sites.”

According to Wikipedia, 162 million web users saw its protest and:

You shut down Congress’s switchboards. You melted their servers. Your voice was loud and strong. Millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet.

The National Post reported that, in light of the protest, major supporters of the bill were now backing away from it. Many of them blamed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for rushing the Senate version of the bill. Those who continued to support taking action against online piracy spoke of the need to change the legislation to address the protestors’ concerns.

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Do Your Homework Early

Posted on January 17, 2012 by

When doing research on just about anything these days, the first link to pop up in the search engine is generally Wikipedia.

The free online encyclopedia – powered by volunteer collaborators who write, edit, and fact check the articles – consists of 3,848,870 articles in English. And every one of these pages are going black on Wednesday at midnight Eastern Standard Time for 24 hours.

The reason is that Wikipedia is joining a protest against two Congressional bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). The reason? According to The New York Times:

Opponents say several of the provisions in the legislation, including those that may force search engines and Internet service providers to block access to Web sites that offer or link to copyrighted material, would stifle innovation, enable censorship and tamper with the livelihood of businesses on the Internet.

Wikipedia won’t be protesting alone. Several other sites, including the user-generated news site Reddit and the technology and cultural blog Boing Boing, will be blacked out.  Some sites won’t shut down but will offer more subtle ways to oppose the bills – such as WordPress, a blogging platform, that will supply its users with a widget to support the protest.

Other Internet companies, such as Facebook or Google, have not yet said if they will participate. Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, has tweeted: “Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.” When challenged, said the BBC, Mr. Costolo clarified that his tweet was not intended to be a “value judgment.”

According to the Washington Post blog, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder, calls the move “a community decision.” The protest, he says, hopes “to draw attention to language in SOPA that…is too broad and could hurt free speech and innovation.” Wales is also quoted in BBC News as saying: “Proponents of SOPA have characterized the opposition as being people who want to enable piracy or defend piracy. But that’s not really the point. The point is the bill is so over broad and so badly written that it’s going to impact all kinds of things that…don’t have anything to do with stopping piracy.”

Even the White House has weighed in on the issue. The White House issued a statement that showed their concerns with the bill, saying:

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet.

The Wikimedia statement speaks to the inevitable criticism that this may be perceived as abandoning Wiki’s vaunted neutrality:  “We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them. But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not.”

It’s fairly clear that, of all the organizations taking part in the protest, Wikipedia probably will reach the most people. In the New York Times interview, Jimmy Wales estimated that the blackout could reach as many as one million people, who will be encouraged to make their own voices heard. He claims that the technology industry, which has been largely inactive in terms of lobbying Washington, is in the midst of changing, citing Arab Spring for showing people how technology can mobilize like-minded individuals and groups.

So, no Wikipedia tomorrow. Gotta do some research? As Jimmy Wales tweeted to students who rely on the site: “Do your homework early.”

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Search with “A Little Help from My Friends”

Posted on January 10, 2012 by

So while you were busy wondering what to do about the Facebook Timeline, Google decided to introduce Google “Search plus Your World.”

Google’s Inside Search Page explains what you get with the new search:

Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.

In other words, this is search with “a little help from your friends.”

Google includes an extraordinary little video to show you how your personal results will change:

And they explain – several times – that these results are personal and private: “No one else will see your private content in their results unless you’ve shared it with them.”  In “Google Merges Search and Google+ Into Social Media Juggernaut,” Lance Ulanoff of Mashable calls this “a significant blurring of the line between the web as we know it and the web as you and your Circles of friends know it.” But he also points out that Google has been careful to annotate personal posts with a silhouetted figure, so that users can tell the difference between “authoritative results” and posts you or your friends have created.

But the Associated Press report  – which was picked up by ABC News, the Washington Post, and Newsday, among other media outlets, introduces some caveats:

Facebook and Twitter pose a threat to Google because they don’t allow Google’s search engine to log the avalanche of photos, links and observations tumbling through those services. That’s troublesome to Google because its search engine could become less useful if its system can’t analyze what people are signaling is important to them so those preferences can be factoring into the results.

In fact, AP says, Google is “tackling that challenge” with the new “Search, Plus Your World.” AP points out that Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, was already mining personal data including Facebook information since May. Yet Google’s enormous user base gives it a tremendous advantage:

Google’s emphasis on more personal results figures to attract more attention because its search engine is so dominant. It handles about two-thirds of the Internet search requests made in the U.S. while Bing processes less than one-third, including the activity that it comes through a partnership with Yahoo Inc.

While Google hopes that you will find this inclusion of personal search results – including photos from your friends, content from your Google+ circles, Profiles in search, and related people and pages, an attractive and useful addition to search, AP points out that “the changes could also spook some people as they realize how much information is being compiled about them.”  And Ulanoff concludes his piece by wondering: “Is it time for Facebook to finally launch that fabled Facebook Search Engine?”

Oh, and by the way, if, like me, you’re not seeing personal results when you go to search on either Google or Google+ , Google says: “Don’t worry. We’re rolling the feature out over the next few days.”

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iMedia’s Predictions for 2012

Posted on December 30, 2011 by

Yet another year is coming to a close. It’s been eventful for all of us at iMedia and we’re looking forward to what 2012 has to bring.

And on that note, just as we did last year in that holiday week between Christmas and the new year, we’ve come up with some online predictions that encompass applications and social networks, digital media and mobile. Here’s what we think is coming up in the next year:

  • HTML5 will be everywhere, providing a platform that allows media rich applications to be displayed across any device with a modern web browser. Say goodnight, Flash.
  • The battle for control of your home media will continue to heat up, with traditional cable providers, TV manufacturers and digital media providers all vying to become the dominant player.  Traditional cable services will roll out home media servers which will stream media to all your WIFI enabled devices, including TVs, tablets, smartphones and laptops.  TV manufacturers will aggressively add new channels and services to their internet-ready TVs and blue ray players.  And digital media devices (Google TV, Apple TV, Roku, etc.) will aggressively market their devices to try and build market share.
  • Watching movies on smartphones while driving will cause as many car accidents as texting or talking on a mobile phone.
  • The successful holiday sales of Amazon’s Kindle Fire will begin a price war for tablets.  Look for a major player (HTC, Google, etc) to launch a full featured Android-based tablet priced well below the iPad.
  • Google will build a tablet that will surpass or at least compete with the iPad.
  • RIM/Blackberry will not survive the year, most likely getting acquired by another equipment manufacturer.
  • Image sharing will create broader and deeper social networks based on design and aesthetics (such as pintrest and instagram). Dually, this will spark controversy based on ownership and creative control over personal work.
  •  The Facebook Timeline is going to be the straw that nearly breaks Facebook’s back.

Will we be right or wrong? Only time will tell. And on that note, we’d like to wish you all a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2012.

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A Small, Sweet Experiment in Giving Back

Posted on December 29, 2011 by

Congratulations to Family Service of Morris County (FSMC) — the winner of our Holiday Charity Vote! This worthy organization is a private, non-profit serving Morris County for 197 years with a mission of strengthening the community by empowering individuals and families to meet and overcome life’s challenges. Learn more about them at http://www.fsmc.org.

Our holiday experiment in giving back proved that the holiday spirit is alive and well. iMedia gained more than half our original number of Facebook friends in a matter of days as word about the vote spread and as our new friends encouraged their friends to “like” us and vote for a charity.

In addition, it was clear that FSMC, an organization located in our own Morris county, was  the early and consistent favorite. Word of mouth, especially amplified through Facebook and Twitter, favored the hyper-local choice.

In the coming year, look for more iMedia Facebook tabs reflecting our services, new offerings, and more. Don’t like us yet on Facebook? What are you waiting for?

And if you’d like to learn how to make Facebook tabs work for your organization or business, email us at info@imediainc.com.

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Happy Holidays from all of us at iMedia!

Posted on December 20, 2011 by

This year, we’re doing something a little different – a Facebook tab that gives you the opportunity to like iMedia, select one of three worthy charities – and we’ll donate $2 for every vote!

Already like us? That’s great. Just click on the Facebook tab and cast your vote for one of the great charities – a great way to help us give back!

In addition, you can watch an animated message, listen to a little holiday music and post your own holiday greeting.

After all, what better holiday to engage in a little social media?

And, as we say in the video, we wish all our friends, family, clients, and well-wishers a happy holiday season and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012!

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iMedia Named an Ektron Elite Partner

Posted on December 6, 2011 by

Ask Carnegie Hall. IATSE Local One. EK Success. The Metropolitan Opera Guild. Sparta Systems. And many other iMedia Ektron clients. They’ll all say the same thing – that iMedia’s Ektron CMS400.NET services rank the company among “the Best of the Best” when it comes to designing, developing, and integrating the Ektron content management solution.

And of course Ektron itself agrees, which is why iMedia was recently awarded Ektron Elite Partner status – the most prestigious partner ranking. It’s a status that we earned by our work on Ektron-based projects every year since 2004. Our team of certified Ektron developers is second to none when it comes to integrating Ektron as an integral part of a total Web framework.

iMedia offers an entire spectrum of services for Ektron clients.  Our 26-year business track record includes dozens of awards – including two Ektron All-Star Awards – and scores of successful, satisfied customers.

Our Ektron capabilities include:

  • Ektron Pagebuilder technology
  • Mobile-aware websites from Ektron CMS sites
  •  eSync and Load Balancing
  •  Multi-lingual websites
  •  Ektron e-commerce
  •  Ektron customized widgets  as intelligent content modules
  •  Rich media, including video, audio, and slideshow integration
  •  Social media integration, including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, blogs, communities and group spaces
  •  Search engine optimization
  • Ektron integrations with back office and third party applications, including:
    •  Tessitura Box office
    •  Able Commerce
    •  ElasticPath
    •  DART advertising banners
    •  Brightcove video
    •  Mirror Image Video
    •  Title management and fulfillment

In addition, iMedia offers maintenance and hosting especially for Ektron clients – including value-added maintenance/hosting retainer packages.

Considering a website that takes advantage of the very best the web has to offer? Call 973-539-5255, ext. 310 or email info@imediainc.com to speak with Ektron’s newest Elite partner!

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The Year of Shopping on the Couch and under the Conference Room Table

Posted on November 29, 2011 by

We all knew it was coming. Every expert in the market predicted that holiday shopping this year would be the biggest cyber shopping experience ever, starting as early as Thanksgiving Day (in between the football games, on the couch) and picking up steam on Cyber Monday, when employees took advantage of greater bandwidth at work to shop on their lunch hours or secretly on their mobile phones, under the conference room table. Who pays attention in those marathon meetings, anyway?

Early statistics on holiday shopping – from before Black Friday to yesterday’s Cyber Monday – show that the experts were right.  A perusal of the various articles about holiday shopping 2011 shows some compelling statistics.

Pay Pal’s blog reported that Black Friday, traditionally the day when shoppers flock to the stores, saw “saw more shoppers than ever skipping the lines and using smartphones and tablets to conveniently shop anytime, anywhere, and any way they wanted.” They reported the following Black Friday data:

  • A six-fold (516%) increase in global mobile payment volume on Black Friday 2011 compared to Black Friday 2010.
  • Between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. PST was the busiest mobile shopping hour on Black Friday 2011.
  • Black Friday global mobile payment volume more than doubled (148%) compared to an average Friday.
  • PayPal saw a four-fold (371%) increase in the number of customers shopping through mobile on Black Friday 2011 compared to last year.

The New York Times cited comScore, a market research firm, as saying that people spent $816 million online on Black Friday, a 26% increase over last year.

Cyber Monday, which Claire Cain Miller of The New York Times calls “a made-up occasion to give underdog e-commerce sites jealous of Black Friday a day of their own,” made tremendous strides this year. According to comScore, online spending passed $1 billion yesterday, approximately a 17% increase over last year. IBM Benchmark, which also tracks e-commerce sales, predicted that they would be up 15%.

The increase in online sales can be directly attributed to an increased familiarity with smartphones and tablets. Bloomberg cited IBM with saying that 12% of consumers used a mobile device to visit a retail site, with 6.7% using one to make a purchase, while The Washington Post reported that “7.37 percent of sales were made on a mobile device as compared to 2.25 percent in the same period last year. Data from PayPal found that mobile shopping had increased even more — 514 percent — from Cyber Monday 2010.”

Om Malik of Gigaom sites that the holiday season “is proving to be a big boost for m-commerce as shoppers are using their smartphones, mobile apps and other devices.” They highlighted an interesting statistic from Channel Advisor, which tracks eCommerce:

Through the year, we saw traffic from mobile devices in the 6-7% range and on Thanksgiving it spiked up to 10%.  What’s really interesting is that Tablets (mostly the iPad) were the majority of that at 7.8% (with Smartphones at 1.2%).  It will be interesting to see if that trend inverts on Black Friday as shoppers move from ‘Tablet couch commerce’ to shopping with their phones while they are out fighting the crowds.

Bloomberg also said that:

Many consumers wait until the Monday after Thanksgiving to make online purchases, some of them taking advantage of faster, more robust Internet connections available from offices. Half of U.S. workers plan to spend time shopping via the Web this holiday season, on par with 52 percent last year, according to a survey by Careerbuilder.com.

Social media is also playing a strong role in holiday shopping this year, particularly in this down economy. David Mielach of Business News said:

Consumers are also taking to social media in an attempt to take advantage of holiday deals; 37 percent of respondents now follow brands on Facebook, Google + or Twitter. Of that number, 56 percent of respondents follow brands to get exclusive deals and offers.

It’s clear that the age of mobile shopping is upon us – and that the trend will only grow stronger in the years to come. After all, what are you hoping Santa will bring you this holiday season? I understand that the elves have a lot of tablets, Nooks, and smartphones on the workbench this year.

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