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Tags: Facebook Pages, Facebook Spokesperson Meredith Chin, Fan Page, Profile Pages

Facebook Pages Getting New Design and Checkins [SCREENSHOTS]

Posted on 05 December 2010 by admin

Facebook appears to be on the verge of launching a new design of its Fan Pages.

This change seems to include the site’s location-based Places checkin functionality, enabling “likers” of the page to check in to it.

Although Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg is said to be giving a sneak peak at the new Profile Pages design on 60 Minutes tonight, it seems that more change is in store; you can already see the new Pages design in action on select pages, such as Ellen DeGeneres’s Fan Page. On Ellen’s page, you will notice a count for the number of checkins the Page has. According to Facebook Spokesperson Meredith Chin, the Ellen Page is a merged page that includes the functionality for checkins available shortly after the feature launched a few months ago. Basically, your brand page will then take on the Places page designs, which appears to be the inspiration for the new profile pages that are to be released as well.

“As long as the address of the official page and the place page match, it should show you a prompt and ask you if you want to merge them,” Chin said.

You can see screenshots of the new design below.

Current Pages Design

The current Pages design, similar to Profile Pages, has the Page navigation tabs (Wall, Questions, Photos) at the top.

The New Pages With Checkins

The new Pages design includes checkins, profile information (which includes some basic information about the page and the Wall postings below it), a narrower left column and more.

New Tabs

The new Pages also feature the navigation tabs on the left-hand side.

Comments (93)

Tags: API, Facebook Pages, Internet, Justin Bieber

Why Twitter Is Massively Undervalued Compared To Facebook

Posted on 16 October 2010 by Leo Pang

Editor’s note: In this guest post, Naval Ravikant and Adam Rifkin argue why Twitter is undervalued. Naval was an early investor in Twitter and owns Twitter shares; Adam does not. They have not discussed the content of this article with anyone inside Twitter. The views expressed are their own. They can be found on Twitter @naval and @ifindkarma.

Twitter was valued at one billion dollars in its last round of financing, but we believe it may in fact be severely undervalued relative to Facebook because Twitter’s value proposition is less obvious.

Facebook has utterly dominated the definition of the “social graph” to the point that conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley says that they have “already won social.” Few analysts seem to notice that the particular definition of “social graph” promulgated by Facebook—people you already know in real life—is not the only possible social graph. In fact, Facebook’s future revenue will actually be built on top of another social graph: the social interest graph, aka Pages & Likes.

Twitter’s social interest graph is potentially a huge cash machine that will lift the company out of the red and into the black . . . (Naval certainly hopes so).

An interest graph differs from the “people you know in real life” social graph in that it is:

Built on one-way following rather than two-way friending
Organized around shared interests, not personal relationships
Public by default, not private by default
Aspirational: not who you were in the past or even who you are, but who you want to be

It should already be clear that the interest graph lends itself brilliantly to commerce.

This explains in part why Facebook is potentially very lucrative: it owns the somewhat-buried interest graph constructed through all of the shares coming from our Facebook friends. As its News Feed grows, so will Facebook’s version of the interest graph. The interest graph makes itself most explicit in Facebook Pages, which also works on the principles of one-way following, shared interests, public streams, and aspirational relationships.

But Twitter is in theory even better positioned than Facebook to capitalize on the social interest graph. Its keys components are:

The composition of the social graph
The value of the data flowing through it
The volume of the data

By excelling at all three, Twitter is demonstrably superior to Facebook Pages, at least, along specific axes related to revenue potential.

1) Twitter’s social graph is inherently interest-based.

Facebook, as we noted earlier, maintains two separate graphs from the user perspective: a social graph and an interest graph. For most Facebook users, the former is vastly more important than the latte—no one joined Facebook so they could follow Justin Bieber’s Fan Page. Twitter’s graph by contrast is fully interest-based: people use it to stalk celebrities, not to stalk ex-girlfriends from high school.

Twitter’s graph reflects the power-law distribution of human nature. Social hierarchies are rigid and constraining, and slow down the flow of information. On Facebook, unless you are one of his 5,000 closest personal friends, you aren’t going to find out what Mark Zuckerberg likes. But on Twitter, when Demi Moore tweeted at a suicidal kid, she used the power-law distribution—aka celebrity—to help save a stranger’s life.

Twitter’s interest graph seamlessly accommodates whales, including celebrities, professionals, and increasingly businesses. By contrast, it is downright painful to maintain concurrent presences on the dual Facebook graphs—Facebook’s lack of tools to automate Profiles and Pages wastes energy, goodwill, and time. Twitter has no such ambiguity, and as a result it is growing its own kind of lightweight business-related engagement.

2) Twitter connects strangers, creating more value for all.

Twitter data is all assumed to be public by default. Therefore it can be indexed, crawled, searched, and aggregated. Value can flow across the graph to people who don’t know the original poster.

When strangers communicate with each other, they are much more likely to be short-term transactional: ask questions, report news, flirt, buy something. Friends communicate more over the long term, building a relationship over time. Therefore, from an advertisers’ perspective, a Tweet is much more likely to be valuable than a Facebook share.

Businesses make money by connecting strangers. Even on Facebook itself, the most promising applications are there to connect strangers—Zynga, Zoosk, BranchOut, TopProspect. Facebook itself has struggled to allow strangers to connect in commercially-relevant ways: even now, Pages don’t allow users to talk to each other so much as potentially allow businesses to blast news or cupcake offers at their followers.

A follow is the ultimate opt-in. There is no clearer statement of interest on the Internet today, because you are giving permission for that person or entity to push data at you as much as they want as long as they’re interesting to you. Interested intent + Opt-in = The dream of every marketer.

3) Twitter’s usage model encourages volume.

Facebook Pages are rarely visited after an initial “like.” Community behaviors have not developed around Facebook’s interest graph. Many users consider all Facebook Page messages to be of low value—akin to spam—and therefore do not welcome higher volume.

You can pick up a follower from anywhere on Twitter, and they can drop off at any time, so you must keep the quality and flow of messages high to be successful. Other users on Twitter won’t put up with your lame tweets just because they went to junior high with you . . . you have to find some interesting “hook” to grow your audience, and you must keep the flow of information coming to keep them, not just place mirrors beside mirrors to make it seem like beautiful content goes on and on.

Now that we’ve analyzed the massive potential value of Twitter, it’s time to address the undeniable operational and structural missteps by the company to date. To take advantage of these opportunities, Twitter must fully embrace three things: third-party developers, Google and Microsoft, and the Open Web.

1) Embrace third-party developers.

Unfortunately, Twitter has lost its way with developers. Six months ago it was a critical piece of infrastructure that everyone wanted to use as the messaging layer for their applications. Now Twitter has turned its back on third party developers because the company thinks it is necessary to own the major clients (web, iPhone, Android, iPad). Hopefully the elevation of Feedburner’s Dick Costolo to CEO signals a shift back to the correct strategy: Don’t monetize the client, monetize the feed.

Here are three things Twitter could immediately do to mend fences with developers in a way that’s also good for the company:

Embed ads in the search results and tweet stream API calls so any startup using the recently-opened firehose can monetize for Twitter and themselves too.
Make the client attribution published with each tweet more prominent again to promote different Twitter clients.
Open the graph API so any startup can innovate on the basis of Twitter’s extremely high-quality follow-based interest graph. For instance, one could imagine building a very accurate spam filter using Twitter’s graph.

These moves would not hurt Twitter at all, and in fact would kickstart their platform efforts versus Facebook Connect. And they’re very much compatible with promoted tweets, promoted accounts, and promoted trends—and the accompanying tools.

2) Embrace Google and Microsoft

Twitter has significant common interests with these two companies. They can help Twitter solidify its infrastructure foundation, invest a half billion dollars to make sure the company has the cash to scale, promote Twitter heavily as the open social network, and help Twitter monetize hugely as full-fledged partners.

3) Embrace the Web.

Twitter has the ability to power the open Web versions of Facebook Pages and Facebook Places, and that’s where the real money is. Don’t make brand advertisers have to think—provide a clear, open alternative to Facebook where they can promote their own Websites and brands instead of on Facebook Pages, and the dollars will start to flow.

The real money comes from two places: search and brand advertising on an open alternative to Facebook.

Memo to Twitter: with search, do not grow a brain. Partner with the best at Google and Microsoft (see Facebook-Bing), and you’ll get great AdSense, AdWords, display ads, and mobile ads without having to run all the infrastructure—and manage all the people!—to do it. They should be willing to give you 70% of the revenues now that you’re doing a billion searches a day.

Let’s say you can’t yet get the dime per search average that Google has spent a decade optimizing. Even if you only average 2 cents per search, that’s $20 million in revenue per day. Your cut? $14 million a day. That is real money: roughly $400 million a month, or $5 billion a year. And it grows as your number of searches and average revenue per search grow.

In addition to that, look to brand advertising increasingly moving online. TV money wants to move to the Internet, but right now Facebook Pages are the only place brand managers can make big spends. Come up with a cost-per-follow model similar to Facebook’s $1-per-like model. Heck, maybe even rev share with the consumers who are following, and give new users a tangible answer to the oft-expressed question, “Yeah, Twitter, I don’t get it… WTF?Who really cares?“

If Facebook’s revenues are $2 billion and its valuation is $35 billion, then a Twitter with a potential $5 billion in annual revenues is massively undervalued. Twitter employees and investors understand the potential, as evidenced by the fact that there are currently many unfilled bids on the Sharespost secondary market for shares at a $4.5 billion valuation. If Twitter can improve its execution and learn to play well with others, this valuation will prove to be laughably low.

Top image: Mistersweaters; photo: Paula Anddrade

Comments (3)

Tags: Facebook Page, Facebook Pages, San Diego

Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook Page

Posted on 26 August 2010 by Leo Pang

Susan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an Internet marketing firm. She blogs at The Marketing Eggspert Blog. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.

So you paid attention to what everyone is saying and you created a Facebook Page for your business. You’ve got your press release links, photos and videos … but no one seems to care. What are you supposed to do now?

You’re on the right track, so congratulate yourself. A lot of small business owners don’t even bother to create a page — they’re simply not “on” Facebook.

But it’s all about where your customers and future customers hang out. And with people spending more than 700 billion minutes per month on this social networking site, it seems pretty apparent that your business needs to be hanging out there too.

Let’s review your Page. Go ahead, pull it up. Your Facebook Page should contain all or most of these:

Links to your blog posts

Links to related articles (whether they’re yours or not)

Videos

Photos

Discussions

This type of content is key in getting people to “Like” your page, and contributes to its overall success. And how do we define success? By getting people to interact and leave comments on your Facebook Page, as well as travel from the page to your company’s website and, of course, buying your product.

Facebook Pages Need Attention

If you neglect your Facebook Pages, they will die. If you use Facebook, you’ve probably stumbled upon a company’s page with no conversations going on and no recent posts. I’m guessing you didn’t click “Like” on that page. An unattended Facebook Page leaves a negative impression of the company — don’t let yours fall by the wayside.

The more you pay attention to your Page, the more positive results you’ll see. Cathy Nguyen, President of LeatherandBags.com, has seen great results from her Facebook Page, but admits she could do more.

“Although I have a Facebook Page, I’m not utilizing it to its fullest potential because of time. I try to update when I can and should probably try to engage more often,” said Nguyen. “Utilizing Twitter, blogs and e-mails has worked, but then again, I’m not doing it frequently.”

People are used to passive marketing. In the old days, you could pay a magazine or billboard company to create an ad for you. Then you sat back and waited for sales to hopefully pour in. But those days are gone. Whether it’s you or someone else at your company, you need to dedicate someone to social media strategy.

Creating a Facebook Strategy

Maybe we put the cart before the horse in creating the Page without a clear-cut plan. That’s OK. Let’s develop a plan together. First, decide why you want a Facebook Page. Is it because everyone else is doing it? Or because you understand the value in connecting with customers who spend time socializing on Facebook?

Write down five goals for your Facebook Page. They might be:

Create awareness of our brand on Facebook

Get 10,000 “Likes” by year-end

Have at least 5 comments or shared items each week

Make Facebook one of the top 3 referrers of traffic to our site

Get 2,000 entries to our Facebook contest

Once you have these goals, break down the tasks required to achieve them. If you want 10,000 people to click “Like” on your page, you’re going to have to expand your contacts through your profile. Post your page link on Twitter, your blog, your e-mail and everywhere else. If you want interaction, you need to post insightful and thought-provoking questions and comments. Decide how regularly you need to post (I suggest at least 3 days a week).

Now determine who will handle these tasks. It might be one person or several. If it’s you, post the tasks to your calendar so you don’t forget to do them. In time, updating your Page will become second nature.

Ginger Anderson, who handles the Facebook Page for Scripps Health in San Diego says that when she started handling the page, all it did was push health news. Now the Page offers a mix of news, useful articles and videos that frequently get comments and questions from the 900 plus San Diegans who follow the brand.

“Our intention is to build relationships within the San Diego community (specifically with current patients and employees) and position Scripps as a trusted leader in healthcare,” said Anderson. “We receive the most comments on the posts that are general and applicable to a wider audience as opposed to disease-specific. We try to balance serious health news with fun, general health and wellness related content along with stuff about San Diego life (again, making sure it’s not always about us).”

Practical Tips

Just updating your Page won’t make it fabulous — that will take a little work from you. Here are a few tips to make your page more searchable and appealing.

Title: Some say the title is the most important part, so make sure your title is descriptive of your business and unique on Facebook.
FBML: Facebook Markup Language helps you create a custom landing page for your Facebook presence. If you want to promote a special event or direct attention to a particular product, this is a great way to do it. Don’t run screaming when I say that this code can make your page better. It’s not complicated, but if you don’t want to deal with it, hire someone to help.
Photos and Videos: Don’t underestimate the power of photos and videos. Even if you don’t sell products, you can still add photos to spice up your page. If you’re a dog groomer, take “Before and After” photos of those precious pet makeovers. A realtor can add photos of the houses on the market. A services firm can post pictures from the office to help visitors feel more connected to the staff.

For videos, why not shoot a tutorial on getting the most out of your products? An office tour? There are applications you can install within Facebook that will let you pull photos from places like Flickr. This can save you the trouble of uploading them in two places.
Questions: The jury’s still out on Facebook Questions, a recent addition to the site. But by asking questions through your Page, you can start discussions that will spread beyond just the people who follow your business.

Once you’ve put together your strategy and have worked on it a bit, give it three months. Then analyze your results and decide: Is Facebook helping your business?

More Facebook Resources from Mashable:

– 10 Fascinating Facebook Facts
– 10 Cool Facebook Status Tips and Tricks
– How News Consumption is Shifting to the Personalized Social News Stream
– How Online Retailers Can Leverage Facebook’s Open Graph
– 5 Useful Facebook Trend and Search Services

Comments (4)

Tags: Cost Free, Facebook Connect, Facebook Pages, FBML

The 12 Best Ways To Customize Your Facebook Pages

Posted on 24 August 2010 by Leo Pang

When a service such as Facebook limits users’ creative freedom, it is inevitable that other add-on services will overcome this limitation. This is why then, we see more and more Facebook tab apps that give us more control and freedom when it comes to customizing a fan page or a personal profile.

I can’t really understand why Facebook doesn’t create an editor that lets users create a super fan page. I can only guess they don’t want to deal with it and prefer their uniform design, which may be boring but at least it is consistent and familiar. Instead, Facebook lets other people get creative and offer an array of Facebook related apps built on the API. In any case, you must know this by now: A personalized page can drive more attention and probably, more traffic to your brand.

I’ve written about this subject over, and over, and over again here at TechCrunch. In this post, I just want to give you a clear picture about the best services that are out there, by gathering all the information in one place so it’s easier to save and use as needed. (Also check out AppBistro for more Facebook tab apps and reviews).

Please note that starting today, if you own a page on Facebook, you will need to customize the page under your tab to a width of 520 pixels. The reason Facebook is changing the tab size is because they want to leave the left sidebar open when you navigate from one tab to another, which might make sense, but don’t you just feel like they are changing stuff constantly? It is really hard to follow and adjust to the new changes for everyone, which is not cool. Why would you constantly want to alienate your users?

But I digress. Here are the 12 best services for making Facebook page tabs:

Miproapps—The newest service around, Miproapps allows users to design a fan page by simply dragging & dropping elements to the center of the page. I found it to be one of the best services I’ve tried so far because it really is very easy to use, and it only took me a few minutes to create an interactive fan page.

How it works: You just need to log-in with Facebook Connect, then the service will recognize your existing pages. Pick one, and you can start working on the page: You have basic edits like choosing page colors, height, and background image. Then you can move to the advanced editor and drag widgets from the sidebar to your right, into the center of the page. It includes photo/file sharing, status updates, blogs, audio, contact form, and much more. Easily customize their settings, and your page will be ready in no time. You can always go back and change it any way you see fit. The results are quite good and look like a nice company start-page. But note, that there are lots of widgets to choose from, you might end up with a cluttered page.

Cost: 1 free page/ad supported. (more plans & prices)

Tabfusion is an ultimate tab suite for your fan page and profile. Unlike most of the services offered here, Tabfusion has an app for each tab you want to add. I believe that the Twitter tab is the most used one, and Tabfusion was the first to release this kind of tab. This is probably why it has more than 122,000 monthly active users alone. But there are many more tab apps to choose from and the integration is done in a flash.

How it works: You choose an app from here and authorize the application. You will get an-easy-to-use guide for each app after authorization.

Cost: Profile pages are free. (more plans & prices)

15 apps await you at NorthSocial, a service that can help to make your Facebook page look a lot better than it looks now. Their easy-to-use applications enable anyone to quickly create & manage a custom Facebook page. I didn’t like two things though. First is the fact that each service is individual so you can’t create a page that combines elements such as video and pictures. The other thing is that none of the plans offer you the ability to use the apps in all of your pages.

How it works: Each of the apps are installed onto a Facebook page as a new tab. Each “account” will authorize one Facebook page to install all 15 apps at one time. So you can pick which apps you want to install and they will add tabs to your selected page.

Cost: 14-day free trial. (plans & prices)

Static520 will give you the ultimate welcome page, there’s no question about it. In fact, it is almost like having a mini-site inside your Fan page. If you have a site, this might be too much for you. But if you don’t, and you have your own small business, and are looking for ways to market your brand, then Static520 is a very good place to start.

How it works: A user sign up for the service and adds their content to the massive editor. The next step is to add the static FBML app to the page you want to customize. After you set this up, all you need to do is to copy the Static520 code into the Static FBML app. Change the tab name, and you’re good to go.

Cost: Two weeks of free trial, $19/year. (fair price)

We wrote about Pagemodo recently and since then around 6,000 Pages have been installed. The editor is easy to understand and very pleasant to use. The problem however, might be the fact that Pagemodo creates a static page, which means only text and photos that are not really click-able. But I’ve heard that they are about to launch a new template that will allow you to add video as well, one that will play directly from the page. If you are not satisfied with it you could always try Miproapps for more interaction on the page.

How it works: You go to this editor, log-in with your Facebook account, and then just follow the easy-to-use steps. Watch the Demo.

Cost: One page is free. (more plans & prices)

TabSite is one of the few services that also allows you to create a Welcome tab on your personal Facebook account. So you don’t have to own a page to enjoy and utilize this feature or service.

How it works: Again, you log in through Facebook Connect, then you’ll need to sign up for the service, go through some email verification, and then you can create your own tab. The creation of the tab is done by a text editor similar to WORD, which should be really easy for users to understand. However, after trying other services, I found TabSite to be a bit old fashioned, and I really hated the picture uploader, but it might be that new users will appreciate this kind of experience. You can have one tab for each personal and fan page that you manage. You will be able to manage them all in one easy to use Content Manager area.

Cost: Free for personal profile tab. You’ll need to pay for anything else. (more plans & prices)

Involver probably has the biggest gallery of applications around. Similar to NorthSocial, you can add only one application under one tab (unless you get Involver to maintain the page for you). Anyway, you can enjoy some of the best apps for free. Apps like Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, RSS, and more, are available for download.

How it works: The implementation is easy. Click on your desired app, and Involver will find the pages you admin and will let you choose which page you want to customize. But it looks like this is only a small part of what Involver offers. I’ve seen them partner with Facebook on the Stories page, so they must have some other essential services under development that are probably worth watching out for.

Cost: Free, Pro, and Premium apps.

Static FBML is the pioneer app that lets you add advanced functionality to your Page. This application will add a box to your Page in which you can render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for enhanced Page customization. The problem is that you’ll need to know some basic HTML code, or at least find other services to help you deal with the coding (like Flickr, for example), as mentioned in our first guide. Bottom line, this should be your choice if you have the skills for that. If not, I suggest that you try the other services. After all, they are all based on the same principles with the same end goal.

Shoptab is for anyone who wants to bring e-commerce to their Facebook page. The service will help you set up a mini-store under a shop tab on Facebook.

How it works: First, you’ll need to upload your products to the ShopTab interface (which is similar to Google Base). Add “Shop” tab to your Facebook fan page, which allows your fans to browse your products directly on Facebook. If a visitor/fan clicks on “Buy” a product at your page, it will take him to the product page at your site.

Cost: 7 days of free trial. (more plans & prices)

Clobby provides you with a way to chat with people from your own page within a simple-to-use chat tab that can be installed on any Facebook page: profile or fan. Your pages can become a platform for fans to chat, and invite more friends to join in. You’re thinking to yourself: oh, I have chat on Facebook, why would I need another one. Well, Clobby is also a collaborative Chat Room, meaning everyone can join and chat together, which is somewhat neat, somewhat annoying—your choice.

How it works: Click on this link, choose your setup page (profile or page), and simply follow the instructions.

Cost: completely free.

iLike music is perhaps the best known music tab on Facebook. The service has two apps: One for regular profiles, where everyone can list favorite music/artists, get personalized concert alerts, create and share playlists, and discover and share new music and free MP3s. The other app is for professional musicians, where they can upload their own music, and share their events, photos, videos, and blog posts.

Cost: both apps are free to use.

Unlike ‘Like’, RootMusic uses a SoundCloud connection to promote music over a musician’s fan page on Facebook. RootMusic also allows the page creator to design it the way it suits him/her. The results can lead to a great looking page that will stand apart from other pages in Facebook, which is why musicians should use it. The creation process is pretty easy, it just may take some time to add all the information about yourself (bio, gigs date, etc). All you need to do is to connect through Facebook, and RootMusic will guide you from there.

A new feature called YouTube Tracks is an uploader on the BandPage Editor where musicians can upload YouTube Tracks to their profile, which fans can then share with their friends across the web. As a musician, you can link your YouTube account to Adsense so you will start earning revenue from performance royalties every time a fan plays your track. (Demo)

Cost: Free or pay $1.99/month for pro features.

As I mentioned, on Facebook is changing the size of their pages to 520 pixels, which means that page owners (you) will need to customize pages yet again.

If you own a page on Facebook, created by yourself and it contains FBML tabs, I suggest you go and adjust it to the new customization rules. If you use one of the tools above, they will fix it themselves.

BTW, if you need some page design inspiration, you can check out this directory.

*Comparison chart created by competitious.com.

Comments (9)

Tags: Best Twitter Brands People Behind Reviews Facebook, Burson Marsteller, Facebook Pages, Social Media

Got an iPhone? With Fwix, Now You Can Be a Reporter

Posted on 31 August 2009 by Leo Pang

Fwix, a website for local news, aims to be a “real-time local newswire” for your hometown. Offering a combination of traditional content pulled from newspapers and blogs along with items submitted by citizen journalists, the site reads more like a location-based lifestream than a typical news site. Key to the site’s success will be the inclusion of user-generated content coming in from iPhone submissions. The company plans to launch an updated version of their Fwix iPhone application this week which will allow anyone to file news stories, photos, and videos from anywhere, all geo-tagged thanks to the iPhone’s GPS location data.

The original incarnation of Fwix, launched almost exactly a year ago, focused more on aggregating content from sites like Craigslist and Yelp instead of on local news. Today, the San Francisco-based venture offers up local news streams for nearly 85 cities in the U.S. and has plans to expand internationally later this year.

How it Works

When you first visit Fwix, the site auto-detects your location by looking at your IP address. If you’re in one of the supported cities, you’ll immediately be shown the local homepage for that area. The presentation of the headlines is simple, displaying only headlines and brief one-sentence summaries – perfect for this modern day-and-age where people don’t read entire articles as much as they scan the headlines.

Current news items take up the main part of the page while active (aka “popular”) stories, weather, and site activity panels fill the sidebar. Another interesting feature is the “break” button which appears under each story. By clicking this, you have the opportunity to “break” the story by posting it to Twitter or Facebook. That’s a bit of twist on what people usually mean when they say a news story was “broken by Twitter” – i.e., Twitter was the first place it appeared. In this case, though, you’re just tweeting something that someone already reported. However, in the case of user-generated submissions, you still may be the first to bring the news to the microblogging network.

The iPhone App

According to Fwix’s 22-year-old founder and former Facebook employee, Darian Shirazi, the company’s new iPhone application will make its appearance in the iTunes App Store sometime this week. With the free app, which will let you use your Facebook or Twitter account for sign in purposes, you’ll be able to submit stories, and take pictures and videos (the latter if you use the newer iPhone 3GS which includes video-recording functionality). Your items will then appear on the Fwix web site. You can also use the app to read the news stories from your city.

Although there are plenty of iPhone applications for local news (just do an iTunes search), none really offer what Fwix does. Even CNN’s popular iReport only takes emailed-in submissions for when you’re mobile, there’s no dedicated application. The closest iPhone app competitor is probably outside.in’s Radar (iTunes link), a complement to the company’s own local news service. Radar pulls in relevant news, blog posts, and Twitter updates based on your current location. However, neither it nor any of the others allow you to use their app to actually do reporting like this. And once you’ve submitted your eye-witness report, the news story will make it to the Fwix homepage almost instantly.

With all the talk of the failing newspaper industry and declining revenues, Fwix has come up with an innovative new concept for gathering news. This is precisely the sort of iPhone application your hometown local paper should have thought of first. Unfortunately, they didn’t – which is probably one of the many reasons they’re struggling today. Good thing Fwix is open to syndication. Says Shirazi, the company has some deals “in the pipeline” to offer Fwix content to local media outlets but isn’t announcing anything just yet.

The Fwix website itself gets 400,000 unique visitors per month but their content network receives nearly 8 million, reports Shirazi. (Quantcast reports 7.3 million people globally). If citizen journalists adopt the new app when it arrives, those numbers may soon increase.

Comments (61)

Tags: Facebook Pages, Jesse Waites, News Feed, Profiles Pages

Sharein Launches New Features, Becomes Must-Have for Social Media Marketers

Posted on 20 August 2009 by Leo Pang

Sharein, the new bookmarklet-based service for link sharing which launched earlier this summer, has just today introduced some new features which further solidify this up-and-comer as the new must-have tool for sharing links on the web. The service, already an easy way to share to Twitter, Facebook, and via email, is most notable for its ability to track statistics like views on the backend, a feature that should appeal to marketers looking for hard data on their social media efforts.

Today, the analytics feature has been enhanced to provide even more data than before, this time with a specific focus on Facebook shares. Also new today is the integration of Tweetmeme and Digg data into shares as well as YouTube stats for video shares. For anyone using Facebook to promote their content, Sharein has just made itself indispensible.

The concept of a browser bookmarklet for link sharing isn’t either new or revolutionary. Many people have become comfortable using services like TwitThis and others for some time. However, Sharein goes beyond just being a simple timesaver for sharing links and integrates the sort of analytics which marketers crave into its backend.

Better Analytics for Facebook Shares

Today, in addition to seeing the the views, reach, and re-shares for links shared on Twitter and Facebook, Sharein is now capturing data on Facebook “likes” and comments. In fact, it’s even pulling in the comments’ text itself so you can use the service as a one-stop-shop for tracking the popularity of items on Facebook.

And as before, the aggregate data tracked using the service is further analyzed on your main “Shares” page where you can see the most popular links for the past week, month, or year. You’ll also be able to tell who your most popular sharers are so you can better engage with your core fans or customers.

New Features Help Increase Clickthroughs on Facebook

The way your shared links appear on Facebook has also been revamped as of today. Sharein is (at last!) generating a thumbnail to accompany an article, just like how native link shares using Facebook’s own tool display. The shares now also feature data on the number of tweets courtesy of Tweetmeme and the number of diggs on the social news website Digg.com. This extra information can help generate more interest in the shared link as visitors will be able to see at a glance how popular the article is on other social networks.

For video shares, extra information has been added here, too. When sharing YouTube videos, the ratings info and total views are now displayed. Again, this is to help increase clickthoughs by highlighting the popularity of the content.

Try it Now!

With all the features being offered by this tool, we’re surprised that more people aren’t talking about or using the service. However, that may be because Sharein is still so new, few have heard of it yet. We’re sure that once Facebook and Twitter marketers, businesses, and any others who want to track their shares on social networks get wind of what Sharein can do, its popularity will increase dramatically. If you haven’t tried Sharein yet, you can set up an account today from the company homepage.