I’m often asked for help in getting people started with video making – often on a very low budget. After having worked as a BBC community video trainer back in 2005-6 and more recently as as web video Producer and Director (www.youtube.com/officialpremiertv) I think I have the experience to nail down the basic, basic, basics of shooting video on a budget.

So, presuming you have a video camera, of any sort, five essential things you need to get right are:

1. Good audio.  Get the mic up close to the subject if possible, but out of shot. If it’s built into the camera then bring the camera nearer. Think of your location too. Don’t film near a busy road, for instance!

2. Enough light. You need to see your subject. Small, cheaper cameras don’t cope well in low light. Do what you can to light your shot. Room lights all on? Are you making the most of daylight available?

3. Tight focus. Make sure you take time to focus up your subject correctly. It looks really bad if you don’t focus tightly.

4. Steady shots. If you are taking general shots/b-roll don’t wave the camera around, zooming in and out. Take lots of 5-10 sec steady shots, which you’ll find will cut together much easier in the edit – and can be used for cutaway shots.

5. Kit check. Before you go out, remember your kit check. Batteries charged up, tripod and tripod plate (if you have one), enough tape/memory etc. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to forget that all important (and usually smallest) piece of kit!

And for a cheeky number 6 remember to keep learning from your mistakes. It’s not as easy as it looks to make quality videos for the web, but it’s not impossible.

Enjoy!

Posted by Andrew Horton

Director, Worldview Media

At the beginning of December 2011, YouTube launched its much anticipated re-design:

It now has a completely new look:

It’s now a much more social experience, majoring on the concept of subscribing to channels and getting updates and notifications pumped to you more acutely. It has a much improved analytics interface too. One wonders if many corporate, media and not-for-profit websites will ditch proprietary video hosting solutions and instead use YouTube to host their content for little financial outlay, depending on how they choose to use YouTube/Google’s advertising services.

YouTube, of course, is owned by Google. Despite its best intentions, Google+ still continues to struggle to make a true market impact in social networking, whether you read the reports, the blogs, or just recognise how much time you actually spend on it since you set up your account?? [ed. not much!]

It can’t fail, can it?

Google’s +1 model (the equivalent to Facebook’s ‘like’) should, on paper, have no problem spreading itself to as wide an audience as ‘like’ achieves for Facebook. After all, Google is still the biggest search engine out there. And now with +1 being integrated on YouTube and Gmail – both as we know having huge user bases – it can’t fail can it? Think of all those cross application networks being formed at the click of a social button!

The content paths from YouTube and Gmail (and Search) head to Google+. e.g. you +1 something on YouTube and it appears on your Google+ profile page etc. But what if no one is looking at these profile pages? You’ve fed the social linking machine (pioneered by Facebook), but there’s no one to see the outcome. When you ‘like’ on Facebook or, crucially, on an external website, it’s likely most of your Facebook friends will see that and there’ll be important subsequent brand exposure and circulation. Facebook doesn’t have a ‘YouTube’ or ‘Gmail’ to drive its ‘likes’ to Facebook. It’s just so well known, and has cleverly opened itself up to developers, providing tools like Comments, Activity Feed, Like Boxes, and other Social Plugins etc. that it doesn’t have to.

The holy grail of social media

Like YouTube, Gmail has had a redesign too in the last fortnight, so it’s clear the thinking from Team Google is to make more effort for those two ‘pushers’ (YouTube and Gmail) to push to Google+ big time! And then the holy grail full circle of social media is possible, with content being pushed OUT from Google+ to YouTube and Gmail and coming back in by +1s.

But if a social network to rival Facebook is what Google craves, it may have already found it in YouTube. The new design is far more ‘social’, as mentioned above. Video is the foremost medium for communication today. Apple, Coca Cola, Nike don’t launch products on the strength of a good podcast or song or graphic, they do it through video. Those last two sentences aren’t meant to be patronising, it’s just worth stating again the important position YouTube has in the future of social media.

Music and gaming – the way forward

So, if Google+ goes the way of Wave or Buzz it has a good fallback in YouTube.

I would suggest, though, that Google majors on two things with the future of YouTube to ensure it can stand its ground as a social network.

1. Think about a better music download integration.

2. Think about how it can get a bigger slice of the gaming industry.

So YouTube may end up taking the + off Google+ and making it its own! aka YouTube+

I doubt anyone from Google will read this blog post – unless they’re on Facebook, as I’ve chosen not to incorporate +1 on my social buttons bar below. Maybe if Google+ does take off properly, then you can +1 this post, leaving these conclusions to be proved wrong. Either way, I hope you ‘like’ the thinking behind this post!

Posted by Andrew Horton

Director, Worldview Media

Easter(LIVE) 2011

The recently departed Steve Jobs loved to use the phrase ‘Good artists copy; great artists steal’. It’s said to be originally from Picasso, and I wonder what Picasso would have made of Easter(LIVE) 2011. I reckon he would have made an awesome Easter(LIVE) – telling the passion week narrative in the most creative ways possible, like over 150 Twitter users signed up to do this year. We had lego passion plays, ones with jelly babies, funky photo montages and traditional Twitter storytelling.

It feels strange but good to use that phrase: ‘traditional Twitter storytelling’. When Share Creative, Worldview Media, Cliff College and the Evangelical Alliance launched the 2010 Easter(LIVE) we felt we were pioneers in our field – in the biblical-narrative-twittersphere. (We think we were the first large scale, real-time passion play told on Twitter – if you don’t think so, let us know!) So creative were the participants in this year’s project that we’ve all had to redefine what traditional Twitter storytelling really is. I love it!

Producing Easter(LIVE) 2011 was very much a team process. With Huw Tyler, Ali Johnson and myself steering it, we had invaluable input from Adam Brown (coder and web developer extraordinaire! Check out Decode Studios), Dot Tyler who wrote the youth resources, Chris Stone who made the singing and rockin’ video (check out his amazing portfolio here), and the Evangelical Alliance who covered press and publicity brilliantly – thanks Lizzy, Chine, and Anna.

And the principles remain the same. We want to engage audiences with projects and ideas which help them to marry biblical narratives with technology; to refresh the stories of old with the life and energy of Jesus today; to reach new audiences and give spark to the weary; to help people to share and connect as a Church without walls (to fight cliches like that one with a vigorous attention to cutting edge creativity and refusing to settle for average ideas).

It was great to be invited to the Christian New Media Awards 2011 on October 14th, run by Premier Christian Media – even greater was to win the Most Creative Use of Social Media for Easter(LIVE) 2011. We were up against some strong competition, including another Share Creative project you may have heard of (!) called Natwivity. It was a really well run evening, with some great food and compering from Maria Rodrigues-Toth and Krish Kandiah. There was even time to squeeze in a video prayer at the end…. A perfect evening at St. Stephen’s, Walbrook.

L-R Krish Kandiah (co-host), Ali Johnson, Huw Tyler, and Andrew Horton

Just six days later, the Easter(LIVE) 2011 team were donning the suits etc. again for the Jerusalem Awards 2011 – again with Easter(LIVE) 2011 up against Natwivity in the Social Network category. Hosted by the Sainsbury family and held at the Royal Society of Arts in London. We weren’t too sure about this one, this time around. We’d won two awards for Easter(LIVE) here last year, so the 2011 project would have to be on its toes to persuade the judges.

As it happened, Natwivity and Easter(LIVE) 2011 walked away with the prize, jointly. A well deserved outcome. Congrats to Katherine Maxwell-Cook for an excellent script on Natwivity and for everyone else involved in the project. Bravo!

L-R: Dot Tyler, Ali Johnson, Andrew Horton, Huw Tyler, Katherine Maxwell-Cook (photo: Anna Moyle)

I have so much time for Huw, Ali and everyone involved in these projects. I could be more gushy, but this isn’t the time. (Don’t worry Huw and Ali, I won’t actually be gushy, gushy!)

Here’s to next week, next year, and all that. Get in!

Posted by Andrew Horton

It was the hidden fact. Not hidden from the article, but hidden from the way it was spun that caught my eye this morning. Below is the last line of the BBC story titled: Twitter says it has 100 million active users (BBC News website 8 Sept 2011):

So it has 200 million registered users, but only half are active? Would not the news that ‘Half of all Twitter users don’t use it’ be more appropriate? The Telegraph and Washington Post also took same line as the Beeb, as did Sky News and the Guardian. It’s sobering – in the sense of how many journalists seemingly pander to Twitter’s PR. Its blog post today revealed the figures. It was called ‘One Hundred Million Voices’. Enough said.

This ‘positive’ news spin today should be compared to stats that came out from Yahoo in March this year. It revealed that 50% of ALL tweets come from just 0.05% of its users. Leading tech blog, Mashable, summarises the nub of it:

‘Of the 260 million tweets with URLs that the study’s authors analyzed, nearly 50% of the tweets consumed were created by what they called “elite” users who fall into four categories: media, celebrities, organizations and bloggers. “Ordinary” users encompass everyone else.’ Mashable, 28 March 2011 ’50% of Tweets Consumed Come From Only 0.05% of Twitter Users [STUDY]‘

Let’s have a look at who picked up the Yahoo story in March. Can’t find it in the Washington Post. Can’t find it on the BBC. Not on Sky News. Guardian? Nope.

So perhaps celebrating Twitter’s 100 million active users is a little like saying ‘fifty people come to our church each Sunday, but we have a congregation of a hundred.’

The Bird Needs Feeding

Dave Parrack, writing in the (strangely named) blog Tech Blorge says ‘In it’s most basic form, Twitter is one of the simplest Web apps I have ever used’. So why aren’t those 100 million people who have signed up to Twitter, using it? Simple? And yet complicated. I sense an oxymoron here. But, I think I have the answer. Or rather, blogger Naomi Pollack, has:

‘If you set up your Twitter account and do little or nothing to it, it doesn’t work at all. The heart and soul of Twitter is interacting with other people. If you only log in once a week, you may get something out of it, but you’ll be missing the true wealth of Twitter, which is constantly streaming information and connectivity, and real-time interaction.’ Naomi Pollack, biznick.com

The Twitter bird does need feeding. You can’t just leave your Twitter account as set-aside, hoping it’ll at least mature with age. With Facebook you can do that. You can set up an account and ‘things can happen’ without you doing much. Not so with Twitter. It’s much easier to become social jetsam, floating along the ocean with no land or people in sight. Perhaps that’s why it’s common to hear the phrase ‘Are you on Facebook?’, but then to hear ‘Do you do Twitter?’. Notice the difference. ‘On’ is a preposition. ‘Do’ is a verb. A preposition links to a noun (Facebook), so it comes across as more passive here; a verb implies you’re ‘doing something’ (i.e. Twitter) so it’s more active.

Twitter is the quintessential ‘doing’ member of the social media family. You have to do it, or it won’t be worth it. If you need encouragement as to the power of Twitter, see my previous blog post on how Twitter came into its own during the Japan Tsunami. And if you’re one of the 100 million non-active users, or find the ‘simplicity’ all too complicated, do check out this this very good piece from Naomi Pollack, or this Worldview Media guide to using Twitter.

Posted by Andrew Horton

Like is now a mainstay tool and part of Facebook’s functional DNA. By liking Pages we become fans and receive their content into our Newsfeeds; we like external web pages with embedded Like Buttons; we can also like content on Apps as well (e.g. Grooveshark). It’s such a potent and increasingly herculean term. It has power. According to a new report from Hitwise, liking a Facebook Page can boost your ROI by twenty times compared to just relying on visitors to your website (src: The Next Web). The Like button is rapidly taking over the Share button (which still works on external websites, but is being phased out in favour of Like’s new commenting functionality). An Israeli couple even named their child ‘Like’ after deciding it was an appropriate, modern and innovative name!

We’re being encouraged to Like, Like, Like everything – even as the radio spits out the Black Eyed Peas anthem ‘Where Is The Love?’ (which you can, ironically, Like here). We can love, but only if we write it in a comment or wall post – or change our relationship status to something a bit more cosy.

But does it matter that we can’t directly ‘Love’ stuff on Facebook? Maybe love is too strong a word for frequent use. It’s certainly an emotive term, usually reserved for exceptional circumstances. After all, it’s easy (as we saw with the near introduction of ‘Awesome’) to be ambiguous in our communication. According to The World of Social Psychology: ‘The spectrum of human emotion is so vast, that we often make incorrect associations.’

Christian believers have an interesting dilemma with Facebook. Instructed by Jesus to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Mark 12:31) they are somewhat pinned to the notion that ‘God is Like’ as opposed to ‘God is Love’ (1 John 4:8). This may not be a bad thing. Indian journalist, Robin Sam, writes: ‘Net-savvy believers want to impact the world for Jesus. Only, some of them don’t realize that they are affecting the world instead of impacting it and causing a few to reject the message of Jesus.’

The Bible even explicitly teaches believers to be sensitive about sharing faith. Here’s an excerpt from Philippians in The Message version:

‘So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush.’ (Philippians 1:9-11)

Conscious of the heresy, but weighed in favour of the importance of the exercise, here’s a version of the same text with a Facebook-twist:

‘So this is my prayer: that your ‘liking’ will flourish and that you will not only ‘like’ much but well. Learn to ‘like’ appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your ‘liking’ is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush.’ (Philippians 1:9-11 – boldness mine)

Liking is more subtle than loving. So how can Christians take the right approach to sharing on Facebook?

• Like ‘appropriately’ – love much privately, but don’t Like everything online. A scatter gun approach of liking can dilute the authenticity of your appreciation of something – and clog up your friends newsfeeds.

• Be ‘sincere’ – don’t like or post a comment for the sake of it. It’s easy to see through an agenda to gain face with that person, artist, or company etc. And chances are you haven’t always read the content you Like!

• Be ‘intelligent’ – remember that all your Facebook friends have the potential to see what you have liked or posted. To maintain your integrity ‘test your feelings’ towards what you’re going to like or post. Who will see it, what will they think?

• Don’t post ‘sentimental gush’ – remember that unless all your friends on Facebook are Christians (unlikely), much religious content will appear bizarre and/or offensive to non-believers.

Dan King, a bible teacher and blogger writes on Bibledude.net:

“The focus should be on building authentic relationships. Without it, not only do you run the risk of not being effective, but also in ruining any chance that other Christians might have […] That’s why the most important thing that you can understand about social media is that it’s social in nature.”

Even though believers are instructed to: ‘Live our lives openly and transparently in front of our friends as we do in the physical world, demonstrating unconditional love and the fragrance spoken of in.’ (2 Corinthians 2:15) – it’s important to remember that Jesus himself insisted on sensitivity and friendship forming before proclaiming his message. Robin Sam writes:

‘Remember Jesus’ approach to Zacchaeus (Luke 19:5). He went out of the way and stayed at his house. In other words, He offered himself to be a friend first before He revealed Himself as the Savior. Paul tried to be ‘all things to all people’ just ‘so that by all possible means I might save some’ (I Corinthians 9:22).

Facebook friends aren’t just avatars with streams of text, links and photos – they’re real people who deserve respect – and hopefully forgive our shortcomings. That is truly awesome.

Posted by Andrew Horton

Make me a better editor

Broadcasters and marketeers face this dilemma particularly acutely. We are obliged to give people a wide range of choices, and help them to choose – but without making the choice for them. (That would be rude.) We need to make people better editors – editing a wide range of choices. But if we make people better editors, how can we ensure they still consume the same amount of adverted media, or secure the same level of material purchases? There needs to be some level of wandering (a new name for surfing) in order for people to ‘stumble/be drawn to/snared in to’ an advert. Amazon has been running with the ‘Recommendations for you’ model, which is now being used by YouTube and others, too. But do we like it if an algorithm is giving us advice on what to buy? It may be preferable to a ‘suit you, sir’ shop attendant exploiting your vulnerable shopping eyes with their quick skill and fervour – but it’s impersonal. And without the personal, there’s less room for intimacy, less room for connection, and value becomes harder to find.

What online should I do?!

Children like to be read stories, but at the onset of adulthood we realise that our independence is more expansive than we can manage. There are many more things we can do, too many things to do, too many choices. We may still like to be read stories (watch soaps, films, read novels) written for us to consume, but we now know we can micro-direct how we consume them. We can choose the time, the place, the platform, the amount we consume, amongst other things. And even if we’re short on time, have no choice of the place, or the platform or the amount we have to consume, we can learn from our experience of confinement and how we could make better choices in the future to allow us more control – and more choices. We’re working to free ourselves to live better lives, so we struggle in that direction.

On web pages it’s even more acute. We are overwhelmed with the ability to ‘construct’ our interactive narratives (hyperlinks offer us a choice of where to go on the website, what should I click through to to improve my experience of this website? What should I Digg, or Like/Recommend/Send?). ‘What on earth should I do?’ ‘What online should I do?!’

And yet, we sometimes still have that innate desire to be read a story. We value the skill and ability of the creator of the content we’re consuming. OK, there are choices given to us of how to consume it, but we often want to escape into the psyche of the author – whether that’s in affirmation, curiosity, or convenience.

Money makes the head spin round

With Direct Debit, PayPal and cookie-stored bank details on websites we lose value in what financial capital we actually have. The quicker the transaction is processed the better – we now accept. Less time is spent thinking if we can afford it. Sometimes, we can be so enamoured with a deal that it feels pretty much ‘free’. We’re only next reminded of what we’ve done when the postman arrives a few days later, or checking our bank statement at the end of the month. Often things are ‘sold’ as ‘free’ when, in fact, that’s purely a heresy.

Take mobile phone contracts. Are free minutes really ‘free’? Are we not paying for them at all? Do we not still pay our phone bill each month, from which these are a part? The problem is it’s just not sexy, or of marketing benefit, to call them by their true name: ‘cheap’ minutes. After all, everything’s cheap nowadays, so what would be the draw to the deal? It has to be called ‘free’.

Take Hotmail. It’s just free, right? ‘There are no ‘Hotmail’ entries on my bank statements over the last 12 years. So where is the cost? I don’t look at the adverts…or do I?’

Similarly, with estimates of around 95% of all digital music being illegally downloaded it loses its value if it doesn’t cost us anything. It’s free, but it’s not free.

And when we buy quickly, what do we lose in the pre-purchase value of a product i.e. the emotional credits we enjoy as we fantasize how this product will improve/change our lives? Marketers either have to encourage such a period of fantasy prior to purchase, or it may be in their best interests to encourage a habit of ‘impulse buying’ – ‘one-click’ style. i.e. if your customers are more conditioned to impulse buying, are they more likely to pay more, and more regularly, for different items? Do we value a new TV more if we are on a shopping trip/wander and, despite not planning to buy a TV on that particular visit, we come across one we are so enamoured by and go and buy it? Or if we decide we need a new TV and spend a few weeks researching and looking for recommendations, then go and buy it, are we 1. More likely to value it more. 2. Likely to spend more?

Conclusion

The real issue at stake is how can we ensure people can get the value they crave within the structures of hyper-choice media environments – and where this craving could lead to. Predictions of the future are packed with ways to make our lives and interpersonal interactions easier, but maybe we won’t get value in these, and insist on ‘old fashioned’ activities like playing real boardgames with real people in the room (instead of linking up to virtual or remote players via our latest computer consoles). We could see this almost as nostalgia as a human right.

We have to work to make things valuable. We may organise a house party viewing of X-Factor (as opposed to watching it on a Twitter or Facebook feed). We may go to the shops to buy that book, while at the same time meeting a friend for coffee. Or if we do to stay physically isolated, we may write a blog or Facebook post review of a TV programme, album etc. and share it in our online community. We mustn’t let the media product we consume become our community. Value can’t be confined to being on demand. It can be demanded, but it’s not often found in the immediacy of the consumption we’re increasingly accustomed to.

Be prepared for a much bigger war ahead. The fight to rescue value.

Posted by Andrew Horton

This is called the Law of the Thirds. It’s all very traditional. You’re told in training that you must never have the interviewee looking straight into the lens – otherwise they assume authority of the interview and it appears that they’re not responding to the interviewer. The exception has been in TV news interviews when the interviewee is located elsewhere and hooks up through a satellite studio somewhere. But now the rules are being rewritten. Why not cut the interviewer out altogether? You can use one in the filming, but in the final edit, do you need them?

Here’s an example of a film I was Director for at Premier.tv (one of Worldview Media’s clients):

I asked Matt about five questions – questions I knew would get him talking about freely about his new album. The resulting edit (skilfully done by Phil Maltz) cuts out all my questions and conveys a seamless dialogue. I think it works really well. It’s intimate. It’s fresh. It’s engaging. And most interesting of all, Matt’s looking straight down the lens.

“…if you intend to break a rule you should always learn it first to make sure your breaking of it is all the more effective!” Digital Photography School.com

Posted by Andrew Horton

Worldview Media was contracted by the charity Evangelical Alliance (EA) to make a series of short, general promotional films. And we’re pleased to announce that we’ve just come away from the CBC Media Awards 2011 with the top prize in our category (Best Charity Promotional Film or Documentary). This is now Worldview Media’s second national media award (added to two 2010 Jerusalem Awards), so it’s further, and welcome affirmation.

Although just the film featured in this post was put forward for recognition, there were actually three other films in the series – Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales versions too. The brief was that they should be visually dynamic and contain representations of being ‘better together’. This is the crux of the EA ethos.

As part of the filmmaking process, we gathered three groups of people, of contrasting sizes (small, medium and large) and asked them to tell us why the EA has helped them become ‘better together’.

Here’s a synopsis of the message: ‘Without unity we’re just a noise — with unity we’re a voice. At the Evangelical Alliance, we believe Christians can make a huge difference for good in our communities when we work together. For more than 160 years, we have been bringing Christians together and have been an evangelical voice to the government, media and society.’

In the films we wanted to do all we could to avoid linear story telling (e.g. going through the history and department-by-department profiles), and instead work on producing pieces which would enthuse and engage people.

This is another great achievement for Worldview Media. Thanks to the Evangelical Alliance for commissioning the project. Here’s to the next accolade, whatever that may be…

Posted by Andrew Horton

One particularly good feature is the ability to moderate. Here’s what Facebook says on this:

Admins can choose to make the default for new comments entered either “visible to everyone” or “has limited visibility” on the site (i.e., the comment is only visible to the commenter and their friends), to help mitigate irrelevant content.

It’s also possible for admins to blacklist words and ban users. When a blacklisted word appears, the comment will automatically have limited visibility.

However, you can’t edit comments directly due to security and authenticity issues with Facebook. Although there is a clever Grammar Filter you can activate. It does things like adding punctuation to comments and auto-capitalising the first word of a sentence.

Perhaps the most important function of Comments is the way content is distributed. Friends or anyone who likes your Page on Facebook can share comments that are posted on their newsfeed. You can choose whether a comment is ‘Posted to Facebook’ when you make it. NB. The default is to post it.

Similar to most of the other Facebook social plugins when you post a comment a ‘story’ appears on all your friends’ News Feeds indicating that you’ve made a comment on the website. This is also linked back to the website the comment was posted from.

Other features include the ability to change the box’s colour scheme to a darker colour, if this fits better with the aesthetics of your website. And you can specify the number of posts to appear on your site. This is done with the Facebook Open Graph Protocol.

InsideFacebook.com says all this amounts to a big leap from the 2009 version:

[The] distribution, flexibility, and access updates significantly increase the plugin’s appeal, and should lead to more installs on top of the 50,000 websites that have already integrated it.

Facebook really has this whole integration game sown up, doesn’t it?! No wonder the company is now being potentially valued at $100 Billion dollars. But that’s a whole new blog post!

Keep following this Facebook integration series to find out more on new social plugins and tips on making them work for you.

If you need more detailed consultancy on Facebook integration do contact us using the Contact tab above.

Oh, and do comment on this blog post!

It’s always exciting to see the potential we already know exists in this burgeoning social media behemoth. It reminds me (strangely) of the free-spirited ‘Where do you want to go today?’ slogan of Microsoft in the mid-nineties. Where do you want Facebook to take you today? Let’s share all and every piece of content we desire through its gigantuous metropolis of servers.

Send takes elements from the Like/Recommend and Share buttons and allows you to send a web page link to another friend on Facebook, or a Facebook group or even to an email address. The dialogue box (where you input this information) opens seamlessly on the page where the button is situated. It’s all very nice. Crucially, though, nothing is displayed on anyone’s Facebook newsfeed. So, it’s very much private sharing and you won’t get any further exposure, unless the person who receives the link then goes on to share or Like/Recommend it.

The Washington Post is one of the first publications to get on board. It says of the Send button:

‘This new Send button takes sharing to a different level: a more private level.’

Leslie Walker on blogging site About.com says:

It’s easy to set up too. I first set up the Send button on this blog in a matter of seconds using a WordPress plugin. (I then realised Facebook lets you take the code straight from the Facebook Developers page, as I usually do to ensure full configuration ability and freedom from bugs.

According to the rumour mill you will soon be able to further integrate your Like/Recommend button with your Send button to give people a more immediate choice of how they wish to share the content on your website. That will also unclutter the clutter of many social media button parties at the bottom of many pages/posts and articles now.

This blog series is still to cover many more aspects of Facebook integration, so do share. No, actually, Like/Recommend and, if you must, just Send!