The Social Path

Your likes, now linked: Facebook tweaks user interests.

It's the season of change, and social media hasn't missed a beat. First Twitter announced a rapid series of updates, and now it's Facebook's turn.

You've probably heard about how Facebook's "Like Button" can now be found across the Web, letting you "Like" specific products and see your Facebook friends' favorites on the same sites. (See it in action over on Levis.com.)

But one issue that hasn't gotten as much attention is the creation of Facebook Community Pages and how they are being integrated — sometimes quite awkwardly — with your Facebook profile.

Linking Up Your Profile

A few weeks ago, I wrote this post about Facebook changing "Become a Fan" to a "Like" button for pages. What was not clear at the time were the full implications of this move.

As part of the expanded use of "Like," Facebook has now linked the "interests" listed in your user profile to two kinds of pages: existing fan pages and new "Community Pages" for topics that aren't tied to a specific brand, business or artist. 

For example, if you listed Weezer as a favorite music in your Facebook profile, the band's name will now link to the official Weezer fan page. But if you're into something more vague, like "Running," the word will link to a community page that looks more like a Wikipedia entry (and probably even includes info from Wikipedia).

The good news? You choose whether to opt in. If you haven't visited your profile page in a while, try going to it and see if Facebook offers you the option of linking your interests to existing pages.

This will link all that content listed in your personal info — music, movies, interests, books, employment and school — to a fan page or community page for everyone who lists that particular interest or activity.

(But be warned: I chose not to create pages for my interests, which have been on my profile for years. So Facebook simply deleted them. Bummer. On a related note, when a colleague made the switch, Facebook somehow added an entirely new interest to his list: Graffiti. We have no idea what happened there.) 

You're also given the option to "hide" any interests you don't want displayed publicly, though I'm not sure why you'd already have such unsavory topics listed on your profile. 

Your new interests, activities and likes will default to public, no matter what your previous settings were, so you will need to edit these accordingly. An additional category of "Friends, Tags, and Connections" has been added to your privacy settings, and is the new home for these settings. For a general step-by-step guide through the privacy process, read our post about how to edit privacy settings.

Time will tell how Facebook users react to Community Pages. They may be adopted as replacements for Facebook Groups, which suffer from the fact that any posted updates are not featured in members' Facebook news feeds. (In other words, you have to keep visiting a group to keep up with it, unlike how you can subscribe to updates from Pages.)

Popular brand pages stand to benefit well from the profile shift, which helps raise awareness of official pages among casual fans. However, I've noticed that smaller brand pages don't register easily in the transition, and users may be linked instead to a Community Page. This will certainly be an obstacle in growing an audience.

On the positive side for brands, especially those not currently using Facebook, Community Pages will make it easier to keep track of what customers are saying.

Still have questions? Facebook might have answers on its Help Q&A.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

The 6 biggest Twitter announcements of the week.

This week, Twitter is hosting its annual developers conference, Chirp, which is why you've probably noticed a flurry of announcements and changes at Twitter. All of these are meant to improve the user experience, so unless you're a developer who has to make sense of it all, you should be pretty excited about the prospects to come. 

In case you've had trouble keeping up with all of it, here's a handy guide so you can keep up at this weekend's nerdiest cocktail parties:

1. Twitter created its first true advertising opportunity with "Promoted Tweets"

For now, promoted tweets will appear only in relevant search results. So if you search for "new car," your results might include a promoted tweet from Ford. These branded messages will likely be  phased into Twitter streams gradually, so you'll eventually see them popping up between your friends' updates.

Some have likened this new ad style to how Digg.com handles sponsored items, which is pretty seamless, though it can sometimes be easy to miss that a front-page Digg item is sponsored.

Twitter is treating this endeavor with a lot of care to remain unobtrusive and only allow sponsored tweets that are relevant and useful to users.

Will businesses find it a worthwhile service to pay for? Hard to say at this point, though it'll be interesting to watch it evolve.

2. Twitter bought an iPhone app.

Since the iPhone's debut three years ago, third-party applications have been the only options for Twitter users. Now Twitter has officially gotten on board with the purchase of Tweetie, a (currently) $2.99 application. The app will soon be known as Twitter for iPhone and be a free application (and will lead to the development of Twitter for the iPad).

The announcement of an "official" Twitter app jangled the nerves of third-party developers, who were justifiably concerned that they will now be competing with Twitter itself.

3. Twitter announced the creation of "User Streams"

If you use a desktop Twitter application like TweetDeck, the addition of a "User Streams API" by Twitter should come as good news. It means you won't have to worry about data limits, and you'll see your network's updates quite a bit faster.

4. The Library of Congress will archive every public tweet.

The Library of Congress plans to catalog all public tweets dating back to 2006. Moving forward, all tweets will be recorded for posterity within six months of posting. 

Why keep such a comprehensive chronicle?

Twitter provides a glimpse into the everyday lives, interests, and opinions of the modern individual. Trending topics shift with the political climate and world events, so our tweets provide insight into the real-time thoughts of people across the planet.

Because in 20 years, I'm gonna want to remember who won in the 2010 battle of Beiber vs. Coco.

5. Google announced two new Twitter tools

Google's never really found a smooth way to tap into Twitter, but the tech giant announced two mildly interesting new projects at this week's conference.

First is a system that graphs the popularity of Twitter topics over time, which is something many sites have tried and failed to do accurately. It will become part of Google's "Updates" search option, and you can see a test version here.

Second is Google Follow Finder, which makes recommendations for which Twitter users you should add to your network. Suggestions are delivered in two categories: "Tweeps you might like" and "Tweeps with similar followers."

"Tweeps." Ugh.

6. Twitter has 105 million registered users, up 1,300% from a year ago

About 75% of Twitter's traffic comes from third-party applications (versus, say, direct posts on Twitter.com). On a related note, 37% of tweets are sent from mobile phones.

For lots more statistic madness from the Twitter developer conference, check out this link.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

The Tipping Points of Social Media.

Here's our newest presentation, "The Tipping Points of Social Media," which I debuted at the Greater Dayton Advertising Association last week:

Tipping Points of Social Media

View more presentations from David Griner.

I wanted to give a big thanks to my fantastic hosts in Dayton, the 100 attendees who took time out of their day, and all my friends who drove in from Columbus for the presentation.

To view our previous presentations on social media topics, check out my SlideShare gallery or related work by my colleague, VP/Director of Brand Planning David Stutts. If you'd like to talk to someone at Luckie about speaking at your event, just drop me a note via the contact info listed below.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

'Like' likely to replace 'Become a Fan,' like it or not.

Documents leaked from Facebook say that the "Become a fan" button that feeds fan pages could soon be replaced by a single-word call to action, "Like."

The reasoning seems to be that Facebook users are currently twice as likely to "Like" something as they are to "Become a fan."

I'm sure there will be much semantic debate among groups with names like "I bet we can get 1,000,000 people who want to bring back 'Become a fan.'" But what I wonder about is the thought behind Facebook's explanation. 

Currently, the act of becoming a fan carries a weight of commitment to a brand or idea that the 'Like' action simply does not.

I might like it if "David Griner is in burrito heaven at Iguana Grill", but that's a one-time approval, not a long-term affiliation with Griner's eating habits.

Comparing the action of "liking" and "becoming a fan" is comparing apples and oranges. Facebook users are picky about the companies they support through Facebook fandom. But liking a passing event, status or picture? That's different; it's temporary and doesn't carry a weight on their public profiles.

So if Facebook believes that more people will engage with brands because they're being asked to "Like" a page rather than become a fan, I find it hard to believe that will really come to pass. In fact, it's more likely that "Like" will be used less across the board as users become distrustful of what clicking the button will mean.

Similarly, we could start to see an increase in fan backlash on brand pages, as people wonder why their Facebook home page is suddenly being filled with marketing updates from Waffle House.

All that said, the switch is probably going to happen in the next few weeks regardless of concerns like mine. But as a social media marketing professional, it'll be interesting and maybe nerve-wracking to see how this affects the growth of our client page audiences.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.