Facebook - Professional Skills

Facebook personal profile has a new addition to update your 'Professional Skills'. This feature is similar to LinkedIn's  'Skills & Expertise'

Facebook tried with BranchOut for Professional Networking and has started taking leaps towards professional networking.

As a Facebook user, start updating your skills and improve your professional touch on your profile.

Let us wait to see more such changes. Also there are more updates to the Facebook platform. Stay with our blog to know more...

Facebook Shared Albums

Facebook recently released a new feature "Shared Albums"

When you are creating an album, you can have your friends' share their images in your album. They can also edit your album. The album will be available in their timeline as well.

You will be the creator of the album and your friends, you give access to, will be the contributors. Contributors will be able to add photos and edit only photos they added.

You can invite upto 50 users to your shared album and everyone of them can share upto 200 photos.

Check out more from Facebook Help Center - Shared Albums

Stay tuned to SocialNetGate blog to know how to use Facebook Shared Album for business and get better audience engagement.

Facebook Competitors watch

Facebook 'pages to watch' update has been an option for sometime now.

Social Media has always been one of the easiest options to track your competitors. Facebook has made it even easier with it's 'Pages to watch' option.

Facebook Pages to watch helps you monitor five of other Facebook pages, wherein you can add your competitor pages. If yourself have multiple pages, you can compare them and know what works and what doesn't work.

This is has not been rolled out publicly. It has been understood that you will have access to it if someone adds your page to the watch list. It is also noted that the business who's watching your page will be known to you.

Haven't you got access to it yet? Share your experience and throw us some light as comments below...

Facebook - Send a Photo in Chat

Facebook has introduced an option to send Photos/Images while chattting with ease. It doesn't seem that this has been officially announced. We've contacted Facebook and keep this updated here.

Though, there have been unofficial tricks to post images in chat earlier. Now it has become official and easier.

To send a photo:

• 
  Click 'camera' icon located on the bottom right of chat window


• 
  Browse photo from your computer & press OK.


• 
  Photo will be sent.

This will be gradually rolled to everyone.

How do you think these updates will make your chat experience better?

Stay tuned to check for more Facebook updates!

Facebook Other folders

Facebook has started monetizing from its features.

Facebook Other folders is a known option. The Facebook messages are filtered and goes to other folder if spam or not relevant.




Now to send messages to profiles' inbox you need to pay  $0.35 USD. Facebook says that the payment is to confirm that the message isn't spam.

Messages sent free of cost will reach the 'Other' folder. This folder will contain all the messages and emails that have been filtered out of your inbox - similar to gmail 'SPAM'

Messages sent to Facebook pages doesn't have this option. This might be a limited feature available only in for US profiles.

Share your thoughts on this!

  

Facebook Home For Android released Internationally

We earlier discussed on Facebook Home - Android app for Social HomeScreen on its release and how it works.

Now, Facebook Home For Android is released publicly to all users internationally.





The phones that are compatible for Facebook Home installation are HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung GALAXY S III and Samsung GALAXY Note II. HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S IV will be soon compatible.

Also you need to have Facebook and Facebook Messenger android apps installed and have them updated.


Though there are restrictions, already unofficial releases of Facebook Home app for any Android phone are available.


Check below for the appropriate links on Official Facebook Home release:

Facebook Home on Google Play Store

Facebook Home Website

Facebook Home Help Center (FAQs)





Facebook Home had a great hype but the initial ratings seem to be poor. The Average rating from 5,596 reviews is 2.3, as of now. Facebook has also mentioned there will be an update to the app only by early May. This is not the final verdict as there will be enhancements to the app to make it for the best experience ever.



Check out the app for yourself and let us know your feedback. Meanwhile, we'll keep you posted on any further updates.

Facebook Home - Android app for Social HomeScreen

Facebook has announced release of Facebook Home by April 12 as an App and integrated with HTC First™ in the US.

In short, Facebook Home is an Android App that, when installed, will be present on your mobile home screen with all actiivities from people around you on Facebook.

It will not be available for Android Gingerbread OS or earlier versions.

To download Facebook Home app to your Android phone, you need to have the updated Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps.

You can get the free download on April 12 or pre-order the HTC First™ and get Home pre-installed in your device and it works best in HTC Device.





Here is what Facebook explains on what Facebook Home is on their Help Center page


Facebook Home is software for your phone designed to put your friends above everything else. You can download Facebook Home for free or purchase it pre-installed on a phone. Facebook Home works together with the Facebook for Android and Facebook Messenger apps to enable its main features:

• Cover feed: Glance at your phone for photos and posts from your Facebook News Feed.


• Chat heads: Send and receive texts and Facebook messages in one place. Open, close and drag chat heads around your screen to keep chatting while you’re using other apps.


• Notifications: See news as it happens with bigger, bolder notifications on your home screen.


• App launcher: Get right to your favorite apps and post to Facebook from the same place.

How will this turn out depends on the users. Would the users be overwhelmed to have this or make it a fad? We need to wait for social media fanatics' response.


Facebook has grabbed an opportunity right from their competitors where Google missed the opportunity to market Google+ via Android!

Facebook Enhancement - Reply option to comments

Facebook has updated an option to reply for comments. Facebook pages now can reply to a comment(directly) posted on their page and other pages.

The person/page, for whom the reply has been posted, will be notified on the reply. It should be available for most of the pages by default.

Read through the post by Vadim Lavrusik, Journalism Program Manager on  Facebook + Journalists

Improving Conversations on Facebook with Replies

Check the enhancement yourself and post your comments below.

Facebook rolled out Lookalike audiences

Facebook rolled out Lookalike audiences - Lookalike Audiences: A New Way to Reach Potential Customers

This will be familiar to Facebook users who have been creating and running ads campaign on Facebook.

The recent update is that, in addition to creating Custom audiences, you can create audiences similar to Custom Audiences. This helps you to reach potential customers who are similar to your custom audiences.

For example, you can create a list of custom audiences who have participated in a Facebook contest that you ran, then create lookalike audiences who will be similar to your custom audience.




This is available for Power Editors only

To create a lookalike audience(From Facebook Help Center):

1. Go to Power Editor and select the Audiences tab on the left


2. Create a custom audience using a list of email addresses, phone numbers or Facebook user IDs in


3. Select this custom audience and click Create Similar Audience


4. Choose the country where you'd like to find a similar set of people and select whether you want to optimize for similarity or greater reach


5. Click Create

 Note: it may take 6-24 hours for your lookalike audience to be ready for targeting.

Here are your queries about Lookalike Audiences answered on Facebook Help Center

Marketers who had the leverage to use it as a beta has had better results (ranging from 60% to 90% better results) on using lookalike audiences feature.

Try this option now and let us know your experience...

Facebook Privacy Shortcuts

Facebook has released a new "Privacy Shortcuts". This is to make the access to change the important privacy options easily.

If it has been already activated for your account, you can see that on the top of the page(next to "Home".)

    

Clicking on the 'See More Settings' lead to the Privacy Settings page.

Facebook Help Center has explained the new option as below:

Your privacy shortcuts give you quick access to some of the most widely used privacy settings and tools. Click  at the top of the page to see shortcuts that help you manage,

• Who can see my stuff?
• Who can contact me?
• How do I stop someone from bothering me?

This is also where you'll find the latest privacy updates and other helpful tools. Check the same here

With the new "Privacy Shortcuts" making it easy to access and change your Privacy settings, a better secured Facebook is developing.

Facebook is also changing some of its options easier to find and understand.

Are you able to view the changes? Let us know how it'd change the security on Facebook in the comments below.

Facebook Embraces Local Search Via 'Nearby' Updates for Mobile

Facebook has rolled out a new updates to its "Nearby" tab on Android and iOS apps, allowing users to find places near them based on the likes and recommendations of friends.

Read More on Mashable - http://mashable.com/2012/12/17/facebook-nearby-mobile/

Facebook Updates - Post privacy gating

On the previous post, we discussed on the recent Facebook Updates.

Now, let us explain in detail on how to apply/make use of these changes, as we did for ‘Tagging Ability’ in the earlier post.

What is ‘Post privacy gating’?

With this option, you can choose a targeted audience every time you post an update on your Facebook Page. Nobody outside of the target audience will be able to see the posts.

You can target your audience based on :



Do not forget that the earlier option for selecting target based on Location and  Language is still available as of now.

However, the difference with the new option is that the post will be seen in your page timeline as usual by Public. You can hide it from the page for the public to see it, if you want to.

Where is it and how it works?

• Log in to your Admin Facebook profile


• Go to the page’s ‘Manage Permissions’ admin page/option


• You can see the option ‘Post privacy gating’
  
  


• Check the option and ‘Save Changes’


• Come back to the page (for which the change was made) and on the status update box you can see the changes.


• Click ‘Add Targeting’ and select your Target before posting your update

Check on the help video below.

Try this option and post your experiences below.

Stay tuned with SocialNetGate to know more on the other recent Facebook Updates.

Facebook Updates

Facebook has been constantly in the verge of making changes and adding new features to their social media platform. Here are some of the recent changes that might not be well noticed by all. Knowing on these features could make your effort to reach your fans/followers will be great.

Additional Permissions

Tagging Ability:

People can tag photos posted by your Facebook page

You can enable the option to allow photo tagging for photos uploaded to your Page by following these instructions:

1.     At the top of your Page, click Edit Page

2.     Select Manage Permissions

3.     Check the box labeled People can tag photos posted by [your Page name]

Check this on Facebook Help Center

Post privacy gating:

Byenabling the Post privacy gating Settings, you can choose a targeted audience every time you post an update on your Page. Nobody outside of the target audience will be able to see the posts.

However, the post will be seen in your page timeline as usual.

Changes on Facebook Page Notifications

Facebook has rolled out a new feature for users to opt in to receive notifications every time a page makes a post.

If you like a page and enable 'Get Notifications', you will receive a notification similar to friends posts/messages on your Notifications Inbox.

Show in News Feed

If this option is enabled, the posts by the pages you like will be listed on your 'News Feed'

Facebook Questions Feature

Questions feature is not available for profiles now. Whereas it is available for FB pages still. Click the + sign next to Offer, Event on the page you admin to explore the Questions feature.

 

Post any updates that you have noticed as comments below.

Subscribe to SocialNetGate Blog to know more and future updates...