Facebook email on proposing updates to our Data Use Policy

Just received a mail from Facebook, referring to the proposed updates on the way they collect our data and the rules of the Facebook usage. Although I was cautious at first on the vailidity of the mail, as it seems, according to the redirecting links on the Facebook Site Governance Page, it is something that we must all carefully read.

I still haven't read all the documents, but I'm keeping this as a start:

"we may share information with service providers when they help us provide services."

Being a Social Media Manager in your 20s

I was born in the late 80s, I grew up with the modem sound, I played Pinball, I had a Playstation and a Game Boy, I left my walkman for a CD player and then turned to iPod. I played Snake on my first Nokia phone and I now play Angry Birds on my smartphone. Most people that were born on that decade can relate with me and many of us have a common digital passion.

I always loved writing and popular culture, so I started blogging on my own 5 years ago, doing what I loved. I learned about Wordpress, SEO, HTML for my own curiosity and ultimately got into online journalism. And then came social media. I started with Facebook back in 2007 and just like everybody else, I got hooked to the bait of social networks.

Facebook Pages Manager updates for iOS

Pages Manager is a useful application that allows you to manage your Facebook pages on the go. As it seems, a brand new update for iOS improves the features that you will be able to manage from your smartphone, with some useful additions.

From now on you can:

• Upload multiple photos simultaneously at the same post
• Add page admins from the app
• Edit the cover photo of your page
• Take advantage of the improved insights
• Create a new event from your iPhone
• Create a new page

How to use Gmail tabs properly

If you are a Gmail user, you must have already used the new feature of tabs that splits your messages into categories, according to their type of mail. This feature was introduced by Google in order to help us organize our mails, without feeling overwhelmed  by them.

And it actually kept its promise. If you spend some time to organize your tabs with the appropriate mails, you are able to set a priority for each tab and check it accordingly. Hence, you can only check your "Primary" tab during the day and maybe have a look on the "Promotions" on your spare time. However, there is always the danger of the wrong category, which might cost you with a delayed answer to an important mail. What's more, if you are a control freak, just like me, how long can you leave this sign of a new mail (even in an other tab) without opening? 

New Gmail is trying to show us a new way to use our inbox and it is a step forward. If we adapt to it, we'll explore its benefits. Since then, we'll be more careful for the organizing of the tabs and we'll try to win our obsession with any notification that pops up.

Blogger comments integrate Google Plus for your own good!

One thing I love about using Blogger for my articles is the integration it features with Google+. Google wanted to cross-use their services- in order to promote G+, but also in order to broaden our reach in an easy way.

Hence, when using Blogger as a platform, you don't need to worry on the commenting system, on whether to install Discqus, Livefyre or any other service. All you have to do is use your Google+ account and just like that, the comment you make also appears on Google's social network.

All the updates on Facebook News Feed

Facebook has decided to leave aside the Edge Rank algorithm that defined the posts that are visible on each one's News Feed, in an attempt to reward the quality posts and allow us not to miss a thing from the people we want.

As for now, Facebook introduces:

• Story Bumping: It's not just about the most recent posts, but also about the most relevant ones. If you missed an interesting post from a friend that was posted some hours ago, it will still appear on your newsfeed. This will replace quantity over quality, matching your interests and your relationships. This will be great for Facebook Pages, since an interesting post will have higher visibility, providing that there is engagement and that the user really finds it interesting.
• Last Actor: If you still like to check the most recent posts, but mostly from the people that matter to you, Facebook tracks your most frequent interactions, in order to notify you about their updates. They thought that if you interact a lot with somebody, it means that s/he belongs to your closest relations and thus, you want to know all their news.

How does the updated News Feed Algorithm work, though?

Social Media Success Summit 2013: the largest online social media conference!

I just read about the annual "Social Media Success Summit" and I must confess that I'm already anticipating for it!

 

It's not that easy to attend big social media events throughout the world, and such a big and online event, with so many experts in one conference, seems like an ideal case to improve our digital knowledge.

• 2400 marketers attended last year, including thousands of small businesses and marketers

• 67% of our social media instructors are published social media book authors!  These are the leading experts in the world.

Does Facebook Graph Search change the way we choose?

Graph Search is a new feature that was introduced by Facebook as a way to take the searching to a new level, allowing us to search anything we want in a much easier way. That's the good side of the new service. But since nothing is heavenly sent, there is always another side to examine.

When I first tried Graph Search, I was happy that Facebook seemed to make a present to the marketers, allowing them to have a clearer view on their target audience. However, it was only yesterday when I just clicked on the search box and noticed this pop-up below:

Chrome's multiple users: the secret weapon for every social media manager!

Chrome has finally found a way to turn me into a loyal user of their popular browser. It might not be a new discovery, but I was impressed lately with the ability to add multiple users.

I must admit that I was always a Firefox user, with an occasional use of Chrome. However, I always had the problem with the numerous accounts I was handling for my clients, looking for a way to organize them, without logging out each and every time. I tried to install several browsers, but by the time I was obliged to use Internet Explorer for my every day use, I knew that I had to find a more functional way. Then I read about the managing of multiple users on Google Chrome, which allows you to create as many users as you want, add their log in details and simply switch from one another, without losing any passwords, tabs, favorites, or bookmarks. Hence, it's like your having numerous browsers all in one, with all the plugins that Chrome supports anyway. This was like gift!

Facebook displays related hashtags

Facebook seems to invest on the use of hashtags and they seem to improve their usefulness day by day, making the lives of social media managers easier.

I was searching for a hashtag yesterday when I noticed that on top of the page there were suggestions for similar tags to the one I was searching. This means that when you're monitoring a specific hashtag you can find useful suggestions with a targeted content for your needs. This is a time-saving feature for social media managers that might want to search for several hashtags, in order to decide which one they should keep for each brand.

Have you used hashtags on Facebook? Do you find them useful?