A Facebook patent application published last January tells us that a new marketing ploy is potentially going to be set in place, enabling users to get rid of distracting ads.

But, while removing ads is just something most users can be hopeful for in enhancing user experience, this specific patent filed in mid 2011, has something else to it. After finally setting off the monetisation aspect of the social media site, something that other sites have struggled with, the social media giant is reportedly taking the step to give “flexibility” to users by allowing them to take off advertisements off the users’ Facebook account; the only catch is that they’ll need to pay to do so.

Though not named as Facebook, the patent application could not be mistaken for any other social networking platform due to the names filed and accompanying concept drawings. Dubbed as the “Paid Profile Personalization” functionality, the inventors Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Ads Product Director Gokul Rajaram, and former Product Management Director Prashant Fuloria, state in the description that users “may select one or more social networking objects to replace advertisements or other elements that are normally displayed to visitors of the user’s profile page that are otherwise controlled by the social networking system.

In particular embodiments, the user may edit elements on their profile page that are otherwise automatically generated and controlled in design and content by the social networking system.” It would appear that the site is ready to let go of the tightly-controlled look on profile pages, and will allow replacement of ads on the right with pictures, or other “favorite memories.” Alternatively, users can have the option to replace information in their “about” page with a personalised status message. While these all sounds good, the catch is that, users will be “billed on a recurring basis for profile personalization,” the patent states. Needless to say, this path takes its millions of user base worldwide to yet another monetisation strategy of Facebook, and one that is planned so well, we think, that users will find it hard to say no.

The patent does not deny Facebook’s monetary agenda with this new roadmap, as they believe that “permitting such functionality improves the overall user experience while maximising revenue to the social networking system.”. But the reality is, are we now in a social networking age where users pay to not be annoyed by ads? Tracking back to the days of Facebook in 2004, and it brought along users a refreshed feeling of online interaction. Then the days of ads-enablement came along, another stage the pool of global users got used to. This new addition became a more pressing issue, as Wall Street started to put a pressure on Facebook to increase monetization streams.

A growing number of social personalities and celebrities have noticed that the change in algorithms in Facebook makes post less visible, and have aired their discontent about Facebook’s strategies. New York Times writer Nick Bilton recently vented his thoughts on the issue, through the publication’s Bit section. He mentions that of late, he has started to getting less interactions that typical, at only around 10-15 likes and comments. For a Facebook user with more than 25,000 subscribers, this is fairly unusual. Bilton even adds that by purchasing a “promoted post,” the interactions skyrocketed to 1,000 percent.

If this is really where Facebook is going the question that springs to mind is that are these really worth every user’s money, or is it better to walk away and just stop posting? But can we walk away from Facebook, and what would it take for us to do so?

 Image courtesy of Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Technological advances mean social media has become a key part of most digital marketing strategies, giving businesses an easier avenue to reach consumers, advertise promotions, and gauge feedback from their audience in real time.

As more and more businesses recognise the importance of this, the social space has become increasingly competitive  and forward thinking brands have now also begun to engage visual social media platforms in their outreach. Adidas is no exception; the leading sports brand has been utilising the photo sharing site Instagram to share new products, capture events and bring other brand insights. For the last three months, according to the statistics study by Simply Measured in its quarterly Instagram Study, this has been working to their advantage as they have already doubled their follower count in less than three months.

This currently brings the sports apparel giant to over 150,000 followers, a whopping increase of over 72,000 new followers in a short time frame. The study further highlights that out of the Interbrand 100 companies, they are just one of only nine brands with over 100,000 followers.

But how did they do it?

Adidas began to post around 5-6 posts each week and gained over 50,000 likes and comments on their updates for the week of February 10-16. Cross-posting techniques also helped to raise their social reach over the the three-month period in question, Adidas cross posted images from their Instagram feed to sites as Facebook and Twitter to garner more response.

All of the top Interbrand companies shows that there is a higher engagement on photos that do not use a filter. Adidas’ Instagram case study underpins this; with 183 photos posted, 107 of which do not use a filter.

On average, they received 269 likes on Facebook, and 10.1 Tweets per photo; the relatively low Twitter results are more than likely due to Instagram’s pulled support for Twitter Cards.

With these numbers as proof it is no doubt that visual social media engagement is another cornerstone to social media strategy. Adidas’ leap in numbers thanks to visual social media sharing demonstrates the potential reach of the image in a social-centric era.

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With the launch of the Twitter Ads API Twitter is moving further towards delivering better, more focused, ads for users rather than more ads. As stated by their advertising blog, Twitter believe that their current system is working well because users like the ads experience on Twitter. Consumers respond to marketers being good as opposed to being loud; this approach encourages ads which are engaging, relevant, and useful.

With the official announcement, speculations have begun on whether this will prompt Twitter’s advertising revenue to grow or whether there will be an impact on the user experience due to a flurry of ads from brands.

There’s some big names backing the API though, with launch partners include Adobe, Hootsuite, Salesforce, SHIFT, and TDB Digital, all of whom have built on the platform and will begin offering new Twitter advertising options to a limited number of their clients. Twitter confirmed that it has been testing the ads API with its partners since January, and marketing analysis firm eMarketer predicts that Twitter’s advertising revenue will triple over the next three years to hit $540 million by the end of 2014.

Advertisers will now be able to buy Twitter’s promoted products in similar manner to purchasing  Facebook ads. Similarly, many Facebook Ads API companies are likely to incorporate Twitter’s Ads API in their platforms in the near future.

With this recent launch, the scenario of advertising industry may shift to Twitter heavily and brands may want to invest more in the Twitter advertising space. As the news feed becomes overwhelmed with advertising, there may be a compromise with the traditional real time nature of Twitter.

• Brands who had previously utilised the manual Twitter advertising platform and made the shift to capitalise on the open API will find that updating campaigns will be much more of a seamless process and targeting will be infinitely more granular.

• When more brands shift to Twitter for advertising, competition within the space will increase; this may also lead to an influx of ads on the site and apps, which is a concern for many users.

• Twitter advertising will become less costly while simultaneously resulting in greater rewards.  After using the API, Adobe Social reported a 63% increase in Twitter followers and a 60% decrease in cost-per-follow.

What remains to be seen is how Twitter is able to handle the advertising band wagon, and how it may become more aggressive with the response of brands.

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A recent study by analyst Forrester shows that the European consumer market will further their tablet adoption in the next 5 years, rising up to 55 per cent, a result which confirms the opinion that tablets are here to stay.

They’ve based the study on a survey of 13,000 consumers in European countries such as Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Sweden, France, and the UK, which has produced results showing that 147 million consumers in Western Europe will own a tablet by 2017, a quadruple growth from the current 33 million consumer base of tablets in 2012.

Of the surveyed countries, it showed that as of 2012, the countries that have the highest penetration are the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the U.K., and France; with 20 per cent, 18 per cent, 16 per cent, and 15 per cent, and nine per cent, respectively.

”With double-digit growth in tablet uptake across Western Europe in 2012 and further double-digit growth expected, tablets can no longer be considered a fad,” says Forrester, in another tablet-related research.

Comparatively, previous years also shows a growth in tablet adoption. In 2012, 14 per cent of online adults have already owned a tablet, a considerable growth from 2011’s 7 per cent — already showing consumers’ desire for a tablets.

A few fundamental observations also showed up in terms of the age range of expected tablet owners. Forrester found that the largest groups of tablet owners are shifting from the 30- to 40-year-olds to 18- to 24-year-olds and this is expected to increase rapidly in the coming years. Since the iPad revolutionised the market there’s been an increase in the number of tablets available, and with more and more competitively priced Android-powered tablets coming into the market. If the likes of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7 continue to increase, this will further drive the acceleration of tablet ownership in this demographic.

But the adult market does not get left behind too. The report also said that online consumers aged 65 above share a percentage of current tablet ownership, at one out of six. Price remains to be a consideration;  the poll further states that the adult market seems to be hesitant on buying a tablets either because of the price, or because they haven’t found the justification of spending for it. Yet.

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Facebook’s Graph Search began in 2011

Just last January, the social media giant made the announcement about their new breed of search engine. Graph Search, the “third pillar” of Facebook, is not just a simple non-natural language keyword-based engine we used to know, but powered by natural-language queries and social data that looks into the users’ social media-related questions.

Graph Search’s Early Stages of Development
Rasmussen shared that it was back in 2011 when his team “showed the original prototype of what we much later named Graph Search,” wherein they admitted they have sourced codes from “previous prototypes of structured search products that were not based on natural language.”

He then recounts that he was interviewed by Facebook in 2010, at the time when Google announced the shutdown of Google Wave, a product developed by Lars and brother Jens. 6 months later he was working on the Graph Search project. Rasmussen reveals that he had three walks with Zuckerberg, and in one of these, he recalled that the Facebook founder “had a very strong vision for what he wanted and how compelling a structured search product over the content people have shared on Facebook could be.”

His team “showed the original prototype of what we much later named Graph Search in the early summer of 2011.” This prototype allegedly only took a few weeks to build but at this time the project sourced code from “previous prototypes of structured search products that were not based on natural language.”

From Rasmussen’s revelations, we know that Facebook had toyed with the idea of a non-natural-language search product at some point before the summer of 2011, an affirmation of rumours which circulated in 2010 of a search project built atop the freely indexable Open Graph tags standard which launched in the summer of that year.

So, what held up the launch until 2013? Rasmussen speaks of the pitfalls of having a corporation “chock full of passionate, brilliant, opinionated people” – “Sometimes it takes longer than I’d like to arrive at an answer.”

Facebook believes that using personalised data will in turn allow users to gain more relevant searches than that of what other search engines such as Yelp or Google use.
Currently, Facebook’s Graph Search is still in Beta and available to selected users.

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According to the Technorati’s Media 2013 Digital Influence Report blogs have an important influence on the online purchase decisions of a consumer, statistically higher than that of Facebook, Twitter or other social network sites.

The report, created from surveys that included over 6,000 influencers, 1,200 consumers and 150 top brand marketers, showed that with retail sales blogs account for 31.1 % surpassing Facebook at 30.8 % and Youtube, 27 %  and other online services in terms of influence.

The digital world is growing rapidly, and new ways of publicity and brand awareness are evolving in the industry and influencing the consumers in one way or the other. The latest trends in social media and blogging have been successful in changing consumer’s buying nature and expectations and have transformed business strategies to suit them which have resulted in blogs becoming a vital part of there purchasing decisions.

The figures presented by the Technorati’s report may result in a major change shift scenario since companies have invested into social branding through Facebook (figures show typically 56 % of the campaign budget), with other social network mediums only at a small share (6% for blog outreach typically).

The importance of blogs has remained understated, and they have been given a tiny share of the overall publicity campaigns over the years. Blogging is not a new channel, but with the rise of social media bloggers now have a reach and status that can be very influential when making purchases.

With the astonishing facts provided by bigwigs like Technorati, a social media ad networks company that is widely seen as the “blogging bible”, there is likely to be a major impact on the ideology and functional strategy of companies in order to enhance their brand promotion techniques. Facebook is a powerful and popular medium for publicity and will remain a hot social branding platform for companies for days to come, but the data shows that companies need to give the due credit and investment to blogging campaigns and outreach.

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Technology and social media really made their marks at recent Fashion Weeks this year with the rise of social media on the runway.

A study from eBay Deals accumulated data from five social networks during NYFW, finding that more people are using social media for wardrobe advice, trend inspiration and fashion tips.

At New York Fashion Week, several top fashion accounts sent live tweets from the runway shows. Two designer brands, Badgley Mischka and Bergdorf Goodman, also previewed their collections Pinterest exclusively, demonstrating their embrace of the social media pinning platform and taking potential for previews to a new, tech orientated, level.

At NYFW, fashion related tweets were up by 100% on last year’s event, and more pro photographers were using Instagram during NYFW.

In London, a new initiative from Burberry took digital personalisation to a new level along with heritage and storytelling trends; the brand is embedding digital chips that unlock bespoke content in the new season’s coats and bags as an enticement for fans to pre-order them immediately after they hit the catwalk. The chips activate media around the story of its creation, such as sketches and runway edits, along with a video of a customer’s name being engraved on the bespoke metal nameplates which are stitched into the lining of the coats and bags.

The Burberry show itself was live-streamed via Burberry’s Twitter feed for the very first time, as well as being shown online and in their Regent Street store. The day after the show, Burberry invited followers to tweet the hashtag #madefor, to create a buzz around the creation of personalised images of the bespoke nameplates.Two Instagram accounts shared images from backstage, the red carpet and runway, alongside more detailed images of the collection.

This infographic by eBay Deals show more statistics around the social frenzy of New York and Milan Fashion weeks:

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Facebook yet again shakes its user community as it allows users to promote friends’ posts without needing their permission.

This feature began in May last year, when Facebook started testing the capability to promote the users own posts. This became officially available in the US market last October with a fee of $7 per ‘promote.’ The rest of the user community worldwide followed, wherein the price varied depending on the location and demographic reach.

Since Facebook users don’t just lurk near the post updates in their feeds all day, chances are, a post – especially the important ones- don’t always have traction. Statistics show that a user’s post gets noticed by only around 16% of  friends list.; so, the idea is to put these promoted posts on top of the news feed to allowing more people to see them.

This ‘enhanced’ version allows users to promote a friend’s post that they think is worth being noticed by a higher percentage of people and, critically, you don’t need permission to do so.

This capability has alarmed users that it may possibly cause over-sharing to those the user does not want to divulge the information with. So how does Facebook really work around this new function?

The social networking site assures the public that this will not, in any way, violate the privacy of its users, and will only promote a post to the same level of privacy the user originally allowed.

“If your friend is running a marathon for charity and has posted that information publicly, you can help that friend by promoting their post to all of your friends. Or if your friend is renting their apartment out and she tells her friends on Facebook, you can share the post with the people you and your friend have in common so that it shows up higher in the news feed and more people notice it,” cites Facebook.

The entire Facebook community has yet to see how this feature turns out; currently, it is gradually rolling out globally, and is available to those users with fewer than 5,000 friends and subscribers in total.

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Fandrop, a new content sharing site, has landed online to help users become trend curators and insightful participants using the latest trend buzzing technology from across the web.

This new site collects content users have assimilated from the usual social media suspects such as Facebook posts, Twitter and YouTube. Users simply have to create their account and begin adding content to the site and connecting to other users by following or adding them.

The interface is just like other content sharing sites people are using today, but the premise is quite different; Fandrop co-founder and CEO Ken Zi Wang has created a social platform with a difference, one that  focusses on the viral content on the web.

The site shows users varying content such as photos, videos and music, all classified under various categories such as ‘Celebs,’ ‘Gaming,’ ‘Food,’ and ‘Sports’; there are also the ubiquitous cute animal photos and ‘WTF’ categories showcasing some of the web’s oddities.

The content is all submitted by users through an online form, bookmarklet, or through the feeds Facebook and Twitter. It can then be voted up, Digg-Styled, or shared to other social media sites.

This goal of putting up a unique site niched on viral content came from Wang’s interest in “growth hacking.” This term refers to increasing a service’s “hacks”, which rather than referring to the practises of identity theft or cyber phishing, refers to a technique that allows results to surface faster than traditional marketing techniques.

Prior to putting up Fandrop, Wang has been known in the San Francisco Bay area as one of the organizers of December’s Growthathon conference, which taught the art of growth hacking to various startup founders, developers and marketers. He was also the brains behind the social news network Buzzreport.

Highlighting its unique technology, Wang shares that Fandrop’s core IP sits on algorithms that allows to predict content that is potential to be viral; such algorithms include user engagement, relevance to users, traffic and velocity.

Aiming to bring virality to a level that can be created on demand, measured or sold to advertisers, these signs brought by their algorithms can “promote virality of certain content to increase the reach to target audiences,” explains Wang.

“Business model-wise, there could be partnerships through customized marketing campaigns on our platform. We could also detect viral signals and leverage these signals to marketing firms,” he adds.

Likewise, more than the algorithms, Fandrop also owns a patent for its clip-and-drop technology, given that it has a feature that allows users to bring into its site a content from anywhere on the web.

Fandrop just had its soft launch last October 2012, and despite still being in a semi-closed beta, it already had 10,000 sign-up requests. Celebrities such as Chuck D, YouTube star JustKiddingFilms, and Carrotmob, have already been attracted to the site.

This traction was also brought by the growth hacking techniques done by the team; they started out by putting landing pages that prompted users to vote for their favorites.

Fandrop has already seen around 1.5 million page views monthly and stands to grow even more in the coming months making virality easier to track and predict from grass roots level.

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Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver launched his new channel on YouTube entitled “FoodTube” last week. In a live streaming half hour show, Oliver hinted at what things to look out for on his new channel.  Oliver’s new FoodTube channel is one of only 60 European-based YouTube channels that were recipients of lucrative funds in exchange for new, educational content on YouTube.

“We want to make you happy. We want to give you food shows with attitude,” Oliver said during the show. He also admitted that the whole concept was to find what the most talked about cooking topics online were, and spin them in his unique way. In the near future, the FoodTube channel will include recipes from all over the world, live streamed shows, and a time for questions and answers with fans and viewers.

YouTube funding money to create new content for their site is not a new concept; since 2011 YouTube, now part of Google, has funded around $100 million to the channels of Hollywood stars, top news outlets, and dedicated YouTube celebrities.  Not all of these channels were a success.  As of November 2012, YouTube cut funding to more than 60% of these channels, an equivalent percentage for TV shows being cut or renewed.

YouTube is seeing a continued rise in use and as Google announced Android TV mobile beaming the platform continues to reach new levels of engagement.

Oliver  strategy is to involve the top YouTube cooks as contributors such as  Barry Lewis of My Virgin Kitchen who will be a regular guest and contributor on FoodTube.  Oliver also plans on showcasing the talents of many unknown YouTube cooks who deserve wider recognition.  This portion of the channel will be called “Jamie Presents.”

The success of Oliver’s new channel will be something to observe in the coming months.  However, as Oliver has the midas touch with most things, he is bound to be a success with FoodTube.

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Connect with Jo Gifford on Twitter @dexdiva and find her blogging over on www.dexterousdiva.co.uk