Wait, hold up.. Facebook is evolving Google? Is that a typo?

No, I truly believe that Facebook is changing the face of not only search, but also email, advertising and discovery of news – all things that up until now the vast majority of Internet users have turned to Google for.

The evidence is all around us my friends, all you need to do is study some of Google’s recent moves and product launches to see that the search giant is being heavily influenced by the success Facebook has experienced in the past several years.

Google Buzz

This new product, revealed and rolled-out to users just this week, is Google’s “Facebook killer.” Basically, your inbox through Gmail becomes a social network of its own. Your email contacts? They are now ‘followers’ in much the same way both Facebook and Twitter connects people. If you want to share a link, a video or even photos you now can. Technically, you always could through Gmail, but now the sharing is one-to-many. It’s been pretty impressive how seamlessly Google has built Buzz upon the foundation of an email client.

What does this mean for Facebook? Well, i don’t think people are going to abandon Facebook to use Buzz. However, this ’shot over the bow’ by Google may accelerate Facebook’s plans to dramatically improve its own internal messaging service. Code named ‘Titan”, Facebook is continuing down their road of becoming a unified login for all of your web experiences, and email is just another natural means to that end.

Search and News

Google is the undisputed leader in web search, but even they know that the future is in real-time data. Thats why they have signed deals with both Facebook and Twitter to include social data into their search results stream. Funny thing is that Facebook has both the ability to search the web AND search the real time stream from its own users.

As for news, how many of us have news broken to us through our social connections before seeing it on TV? Google news is a tremendous news aggregator, but in my experience, rarely used directly. News from Google News gets aggregated and distributed at the top of search results, but I almost always hear the big news of the day from either my Facebook or Twitter friends.

Advertising

The other day, while listening to the Howard Stern show, Stern mentioned that he wasn’t sure how Google made money. Easy, they make it just like every other internet web site – through advertising. Although my work experience these last 10 years have been in search engine marketing, using predominantly Google AdWords, I can tell you that Facebook has the stronger platform.

Not only do I get keyword targeting, but i can target a users likes and dislikes. Facebook advertising has been covered on this blog before so I won’t go into all of the details. Suffice to say, Google can (and will) learn a lot about advertising by copying Facebook. I believe that its only a matter of time before you can target users in a more ’social manner’ through Google AdWords using tools specifically made for Google Buzz.

Summary: This article is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Static FBML application to bring some flair and functionality to your Facebook fan page.

The vast majority of Facebook fan pages carry the same, standard “vanilla” look. You’ve got a wall, info tab, pictures, video and events. Every once in a while you will come across a page that stands out from the others. Perhaps they have a custom landing page, or some type of graphical box which has an offer. Facebook doesn’t make it very easy to learn how to add that functionality, and it took me quite some time to learn the technique.

What is FBML?

FBML is Facebook’s version of HTML, the language that web pages are written in. For the most part, a knowledge of HTML is all that is needed to utilize the functionality of the Static FBML application. This particular application, which was created by Facebook and can be added to your pages, allows you to create a “web page” within a tab or box that you can attach to your page. Sound complicated? It really isn’t, once you dig in and get started.

How do find the Static FBML application and install it

Like any other application, Static FBML can be found by using the search box anywhere on Facebook. Simply type in: Static FBML and you should see results similar to these (see image below)

Facebook search results for Static FBML

In the results list you will find listings for both Applications and Pages. You are looking for the Application so click on that.

Once your on the page for the Static FBML application, you will look for the link to “add application to my page” which should be at the top left of the screen, under the logo for the application. Clicking the link brings up a popup window which allows you to select the page you’d like to add it to. Keep in mind, you can only add application to pages which you are an administrator for.

After you have added the app, pull up your Facebook fan page and click on the + sign in the nav bar above where you can enter wall messages. There should now be an option to add a new FBML tab.

Here is where things get a little tricky. Now you have a new tab called “FBML” on your page but it is blank, and there doesn’t appear to be a way to add content to it. Generally clicking on the pencil icon on any tab allows you to edit options for it, however with this particular app that only gives you the ability to delete the tab, which isn’t what we are looking for.

Editing your new FBML tab

Instead, head to your page’s administrator section (e.g. return to the wall page, click “Edit this page” from the list of options under your logo).

Click the edit button and you will be brought into “edit mode” for the Static FBML application itself. Here you can adjust the title that will show up on the tab, as well as drop in the text and/or HTML/FBML code you’d like displayed when someone clicks on the tab.

From here you can be creative. I like to generate some HTML code using an editor and copy/paste the code into this box. Some elements like video embeds you may have issues with. There are workarounds using Facebook’s own FBML specific embed tabs which will be covered in another article on the site. But basic formatting, tables, images and links will all work in the Static FBML tab you have just added to your page.

Click save changes and go back to your Facebook page wall. You should have a new tab called “Sample FBML Tab” that when you click on it displays “Hello, World” in a H1 heading.

In addition to the tab, you now have a copy of this FBML output inside your “Boxes” tab. This is another one of those hidden “features” that Facebook has added, and it is important to note because the only way to move this FBML content to your page’s wall is by first going to the Boxes tab, and clicking the pencil next to the box and selecting “Move to Wall.” No, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but thats how it works for now.

This is obviously a simple customization, but you can create complex tables and add imagery that will stand out for your visitors. Here are just a few examples of the customizations I’ve seen done with the Static FBML application.

Click to visit

Click to visit

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Summary: This article will show you how, as well as provide some tips for determining the frequency of updates you should be sending.

It is a little surprising that Facebook fan pages (and the people who administer them) don’t take greater advantage of the tools available for sending updates. While you can always post messages, links, videos and other content to a page’s wall, you also have the ability to send targeted updates to your fan’s inbox.

How to send an update to your fans

The link to the “send update to fans” tool has moved recently into the “edit this page” section of your Facebook fan page. Access to this screen is only available for Facebook fan page administrators.

Once you have entered the edit this page section, look to the right side of your screen to find the “Promote this page” box.

Click on “Send update to fans”

Targeting your updates

Now that you know how to send an update, the next question you should ask is what type of update should you send? If you have a large fan base, you might consider using some of the targeting tools available to you.

Updates can be targeted a number of ways – either by location, age or sex.

There are several advantages for targeting your updates. Lets say that your a retailer and want to test promotions by market. You may decide to send an update to your fans in Phoenix, Arizona a special discount code, or provide a link to your web site that has special URL tracking.

Of course, you might also just want to tailor your message to your audience. You might decide that your particular product would be better suited to females, or to people over the age of 21.

How often should you send updates to fans?

This one is a little more subjective, because it really depends on how often you have something you need to communicate.

Something that has worked for me has been to examine your Facebook page analytics and look for unsubscribed or removed fans. Unsubscribed fans are those who have hidden your updates, while removed fans have essentially removed themselves from your page entirely.

Much of this is trial and error, but over time you will get a good gauge of how often you should be communicating with your fans based up these numbers. If you update too often, you may notice a spike in the numbers of removed or subscribed fans.

What makes a good update?

As you have learned, Facebook updates give you a chance to reach a more specific, targeted audience. What else are updates good for though? Use the send update to fan function to send messages to your customers which are more detailed than what you’d normally see in a wall update.

The Desert Botanical Garden uses Facebook updates to let their fans know about special events that are upcoming. Attached to the update is the actual event listing, which allows me to RSVP in one easy step.

On the other hand, consider the next page update, this one sent to me from the band Silversun Pickups.

Basically, a list of a bunch of tour stops and sale times for cities I have no interest in (and don’t live in). This would have been a great opportunity for the band to send me just information about Arizona stops on their tour (or perhaps even southwest stops), include a link to the site where I could buy a ticket, or even a video from the band inviting me out to the show (a generic video, obviously).

The send update to fans function can be incredibly powerful when done to the right audiences, with a targeted message. If you administer a page you should really be using this tool!

Summary: Encourage your fans to give you feedback by asking questions. Turn their answers into crowd sourced social media content.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with tactics for generating engagement on Facebook. Most of the businesses or products I am a fan of use their pages for pushing out announcements. Judging by the activity on those pages, you can tell that the administrators aren’t reading replies or really caring at all what their fans have to say. At all.

Ask questions to get feedback.

So yesterday, mostly on a whim, I decided to try something new to generate conversation. It started with a “Fill in the blank” style question where fans of a popular page were asked to fill in the blank with their “must see” places to visit in their state.

Within a few minutes, the responses started to come in. Hours later, there were over 100 tips for places to go visit.

Asking questions is a great way to crowd source social media. These fan recommended destinations will become the basis of articles, videos, maps and itineraries or potentially other interesting visualizations that can be re-shared on Facebook or perhaps other third party web sites.

Not only will your fans appreciate being included in the conversation, they will love to see their recommendations up in lights when you turn them into something great.

Summary: Facebook is changing the design of their site again. Here are a few observations, as well as a link to Mashable.

Mashable has a great write up of an impending Facebook Home Page redesign. They’ve got some screenshots of the new layout, presumably from a beta tester or from a Facebook employee. Long time users of the site will see this as old hat, as Facebook is always tinkering with their site design.

Of particular interest to me was the new location of the search box, moved from the extreme top right of the page to being more centered over the News Feed content.

Facebook redesign screenshot from Mashable

One of the things I hear most when training people on how to use Facebook as a marketing vehicle for their business is that they aren’t aware of all the various things you can find on the site (particularly, application to install on your page) with the search box.

Interestingly, it doesn’t appear that Facebook is changing the Live Feed and News Feed views, another contributor to confusion on the site. While it may seem obvious, I can’t tell you how many people complain that they are seeing updates only from a select few and why they aren’t in real-time. Because the default feed view is the News Feed, which aggregates the most popular content from your friends, many are confused. This doesn’t seem to be addressed in the redesign.

You can read more about other changes to Facebook’s design over at Mashable.

Summary: A look at how major retailers like Toys “R” Us and Staples are using Facebook to promote their Black Friday specials.

As Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year approaches, businesses are turning to social media to help promote the deep discounts they will be offering on Black Friday. Here are a few examples I’ve seen, as well as some ideas for how these campaigns could be improved.

Toys “R” Us on Facebook

Right now Toys “R” Us is getting a lot of attention for their Facebook campaign, but really its very simple, if not a little lazy. Becoming a fan of theirs enables you to view a circular with their Black Friday deals before they are released to the general public. And, they even embed the circular on their Facebook Page, which is nice. Really, though, was this all they could have done?

The circular is something which can easily be lifted from the Facebook Page and reposted elsewhere on the net. Why not instead give fans an additional 5% off their purchases through a unique code that could be generated? That way, you could also track through to see who used their code later.

Staples

Generally speaking, I think Staples has done some nice things with their Facebook Page. They have a fun little application called “I Shred U” which lets you put embarrassing Facebook photos into a virtual shredder. What Staples didn’t do was put much though into their Black Friday promotion.

Staples is “leaking” Black Friday specials through wall posts. This approach doesn’t really help them garner new fans, as anyone can see these updates. In a way I think thats nice because if you aren’t going to provide an incentive to become a fan, at least you should make the updates public so everyone can see. However, like Toys “R” Us this just feels a little lazy.

Why not make things a little more fun and tie in the Shred app? Install the shred app on your page, use it, and upon doing so you receive a deal on a shredder, or a camera, or a printer or any other number of things associated with Staples. That way you get people to interact with an already otherwise cool application on your page, and bring that tie in back to Black Friday.

I think that whenever a retailer does anything with their Facebook Page the tendency is to see stories about it. The truth is that advertising online, especially on a social network like Facebook, should elevate the quality of the ads. When a retailer gets lazy and doesn’t fully utilize the potential of the medium, it really stands out.

Do you disagree? Which retailers are doing the best job with their Black Friday promotions?

Summary: Facebook recently changed the location of the Send Updates to Fans link on pages, a powerful feature that allows for targeted updates.

If you were wondering where your link to send updates to your fans went over the weekend, never fear the option is still available, just hidden.

Facebook allows fan page administrators to send targeted updates to their fan’s inbox. These are generally used as updates to keep your fans up to date with the latest happenings of your business and great for sending as weekly news digests for fans who may have not seen your wall updates. The other great thing about the send update to fans feature is that they can be targeted by location, gender or even age range.

Well, Facebook decided that this option was better placed under the page “Edit” section where administrators can fine tune the settings of various aspects of the Facebook fan page.

The new promote your page box

To find the new location of this powerful feature, simply click on “Edit my page” and then look on the right rail for a new box called “Promote my page.” You’ll find the option to send updates to fans here, along with others like the ability to create a fan box to include on your web site.

Summary: Vivox Voice for Facebook allows users and Facebook Page administrators to provide high-quality audio chat to their fans.

As a gamer, I was already familiar with Vivox. They are the guys who bring voice chat to many online games on the PC. Through my association with Gamebreakr, a new video game news podcast, I got a chance to test out Vivox’s Voice application for Facebook. Vivox Voice is incredibly easy to use and the sound quality is excellent. I think that voice is the next great frontier for Facebook chat so I’m thrilled to be able to share some of what I’ve learned about Vivox.

Jennifer Frkanec, Director of Marketing at Vivox agreed to answer some of my questions about their new Facebook voice application, as well as provide some insight into where its headed and how it might help marketers trying to reach customers over the Facebook platform.

Facebook Marketing Review:

Why did Vivox decide to bring its already established voice chat technology to Facebook?

Jennifer Frkanec:

Vivox has a long history of bringing voice to communities, earlier this year we began developing our Web Voice solution, and the team was bursting with ideas on how to put it to use. A lot of the staff uses Facebook and knew it needed a way to simply talk with friends. We started to tinker and here we are today. We are thrilled with the take up and interest from the Facebook community, people want a deeper connection than leaving notes for each other

FMR:

What were some of the challenges involved with bringing Vivox into Facebook’s platform?

Jennifer Frkanec:

Honestly, I cannot really think of any challenges we had. The Facebook API’s are easy to work with and synched up nicely with Web Voice. Says something for our solution, naturally, but also about the flexibility and strength of the Facebook platform in connecting people when and with whom they want.

FMR:

What has the response been to the Vivox Voice application on Facebook? Can you share any metrics on usage or adoption?

Jennifer Frkanec:

Get Vivox on Facebook

The response has been great! Metrics wise – we surpassed Skype as the #1 voice app on Facebook a few days ago…we like that metric.

We have had people using the application all over the globe and reaching out to us with stories of how they are using it – direct conversations, family reunions, business meetings, language learning, bands doing fan meets on Facebook, fantasy sports chats, book club sessions and games. More and more use cases keep coming in and we love it!

Two quick stories that have happened recently: A high school friend of mine who now lives in Australia was talking with a friend in Florida – she IMed me to tell me how great the quality was and that they were about to pull in a friend in Spain! They loved how easy it was to see people and connect live and the quality.

And just this week a client of ours, Hi-Rez Studios, who are launching a new MMO game, Global Agenda, in early 2010 hosted a developer chat in their Vivox Voice room on Facebook. They had over 100 people show up to listen to the devs talk about the game and answer questions from players. It was great! Because our room size is presently maxed at 100 on Facebook we had people camping out in the channel a week in advance to secure their spot! Two hours before the event the room was 75% full and the conversation was going very well self-moderated. We got great feedback on the event and want for more from both the players and the game studio.

We are having great fun hearing the stories for use and it keeps us innovating to make the app even better.

FMR:

Can you talk about some of the new features coming for Vivox that are on your roadmap as the product continues to evolve?

Jennifer Frkanec:

Future features focus on usability and making the application an effective tool for the business side of Facebook and a fun app for the social side. We are looking at making events easier to create and run – attaching to more viral ways of promoting the event and ways of managing large groups with text and speaking indicators. We are also looking at different modes where only speakers can be heard but users can ‘raise their hand’ to ask a question, and, of course, expanding capacity for even larger events on Facebook.

Recording is also on the roadmap so people can re-post events like podcasts. On the more social side, we are looking at implementing virtual goods like voice fonts, recording messages to post to walls and enhanced dial-in capability. We are also working to open up the APIs and give developers more access and control of the app for their own purposes. It’s not just about getting people to talk for us – it is about getting people to talk when they want and with the tools they need to do it effectively and in the context of their lives. Scalability, high quality, controls and enhanced options will make that happen. And for enterprises using Facebook as part of their marketing strategy, well, that’s all about engaging community and making revenue, so we support that too.

FMR:

Vivox is established in the PC gaming space – do you have plans for integrating voice chat into social games on Facebook?

Jennifer Frkanec:

Some games are already using the app as is to support their players, with no customization. Plus, we are talking to quite a few developers and they are excited about what voice chat can do for their community on a larger scale and the game. So yes – there are plans.

FMR:

Are there any plans for secure, password protected invite only channels?

Jennifer Frkanec:

We can do that absolutely now but have not yet implemented it into the Facebook app. Currently you can lock a channel so invite in who you want and then not let in anyone else.  We have the capability to offer a password lock on a channel and we will expose that feature soon.

FMR:

Finally, talk about some of the advertiser functions you are planning for Vivox (branded channels, sponsored ads, pre-roll ads, etc)

Jennifer Frkanec:

The Vivox Web Voice solution supports audio advertising, where a short audio clip can be played as people enter into channel. This can easily be brought into the Facebook application for companies looking to sponsor FB event. Users join a room and are greeted by a short message from appropriate brands.   It is a captive and relevant audience, just what marketers want. Plus, users are able to interact with the ad. For example, they can say ‘more information’ and be connected to a customer service rep for that brand or here another message on more offers. So now, not only do they appeal to the sense of sight with graphical ads, they reach out to their audience in a relaxed state of awareness with an audio message– it’s a good reinforcement and a nice revenue generating strategy to support further social network endeavors.

You can try Vivox Voice for Facebook by visiting the application page on Facebook.

Summary: Facebook adds additional options for targeting messages posted to a Page’s wall.

New options for targeting

This morning, Facebook rolled out a new option for Page Administrators to customize and target their wall postings. You now have the ability to post messages to your Facebook Page wall to everyone, or to fans who live in certain countries. There is also the option now to target updates to fans who speak certain languages.

I can imagine this new feature being incredibly useful for those Facebook Pages with a large international audience. I hope that this is the first wave of additional targeting options that Facebook rolls out. It would be nice to be able to target messages using the same criteria as found in the “Send Updates to Fans” section of a Facebook Page.

Summary: Two new Facebook Connect sites were launched this week, one by CBS and the other by MasterCard.

This week there were two new Facebook Connect sites launched by big brands, and we have a video walkthrough of both for your viewing pleasure.

First, CBS launched a new CSI branded Facebook Connect site which puts your profile information into a dynamically created episode promo video. While there are other sites which have done similar things with profile data, the CSI site is one of the more polished implementations that we’ve seen.

Upon visiting the site you are prompted to connect using your Facebook login. After a few seconds, a promotional video starring “you” plays. If you watch the video closely you will see places where images and information contained in your Facebook profile is included into the video stream – for example, on the bumper sticker of the car that is being pulled out of the lake.

The second Facebook Connect implementation to show is the new Holiday Gift Finder from MasterCard. Starring Peyton Manning and Alyson Hannigan, the Gift Finder is designed to help you find the perfect gift for your friends on Facebook. After signing in using your Facebook account (and granting permission for the site to post to your wall) you are prompted for a target budget, a desired Facebook friend and then several questions about that friend. All the products are drawn from the inventory on Amazon.com, and both Peyton and Alyson chime in from time to time with their own suggestions.