WebProNews

Tag: social plugins

  • If You Use Facebook’s Like Box Plugin, You Need To Switch To The Page Plugin

    Update: A spokesperson for Facebook offers some clarity on this:

    If a website uses the Like Box today, it will not stop working on June 23 — instead it will become the Page Plugin.
    We recommend that site owners upgrade their code to the new SDK and Graph API, as this will allow them to take advantage of the newest platform features. However, if they don’t upgrade, their site will automatically update to the Page Plugin on June 23 — so their site will have the benefit of the new, updated look and functionality without the site owner having to do any work.

    Original Article: A few years back, Facebook launched the Like Box plugin as one way for websites to generate more engagement from Facebook users by showing content from their Facebook pages, and showing them other people who have liked the page. The company is now shutting the plugin down.

    Facebook is advising developers to start using its Page Plugin instead of the Like Box. In a document on its developer site (via TheNextWeb), Facebook says:

    With the release of Graph API v2.3, the Like Box plugin is deprecated and will stop working on June 23rd 2015. Use the new Page Plugin instead. The Page Plugin allows you to embed a simple feed of content from a Page into your websites.

    The Like Box is a special version of the Like Button designed only for Facebook Pages. It allows admins to promote their Pages and embed a simple feed of content from a Page into other sites.

    So you’ve got a couple months to switch.

    The Page Plugin lets your website visitors like and share your Facebook Page without having to leave your site. Here’s what it looks like:

    The plugin allows you to change the following settings: href, width, height, hide_cover, show_facepile, and show_posts. Those last two enable you to display profile photos, incuding the user’s friends, who have liked the page, and to show posts from your Page. The standard configuration only includes the header and a cover photo, and is 380 pixels wide.

    You can also adjust the language if need by. Just load a localized version of the Facebook JavaScript SDK, and when you do so, adjust the value js.src to use your locale. For example, for Russian, you would replace en_US with ru_RU.

    In case you could tell from the name of the plugin, it only supports Pages. In other words, you can’t use it for Facebook Events or Groups. You also can’t use it for pages without owners, such as generated pages, places, interests, etc.

    Images via Facebook

  • Facebook Takes Issue With Part Of Child Privacy Law

    Websites that are collecting information from children under the age of thirteen are required to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

    Facebook is concerned with COPPA, in how it relates to plug-ins, like the company’s ever-popular “Like” button. The company sent a 20-page letter to the FTC last week (hat tip: Business Insider), seeking changes to the law that would protect its plug-ins, which it views as free speech.

    Here’s a “small” snippet of the lengthy document, where Facebook makes the case for plug-ins after citing educational sites, like Kahn Academy, that use them:

    As the Commission evaluates the further changes proposed in the Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“SNPRM”), Facebook encourages the Commission to develop policies that take into account the significant impediments that a revised COPPA Rule could create for innovation and the ecosystem that shapes students’ online experiences. This social functionality, widely used by educational sites and apps, is dependent on plugins and could be threatened by a COPPA Rule that renders plugin providers responsible for the actions and motives of third parties and vice versa. Part of the value of many educational sites and services is that they are offered for little or no cost, which means that they often will not have the resources to meet burdensome compliance obligations.

    Requiring these sites or services and plugin providers to monitor each others’ information practices could result in the eradication of integrated plugins and the powerful features they facilitate. Furthermore, barring sites and online services from using platforms or common mechanisms to comply with their COPPA obligations could chill innovation due to the cost of compliance. Facebook believes strongly in the importance of empowering parents to protect their children online, and we have been leaders in efforts to promote the safety of the minors, aged 13 to 17, who use our service. However, we have serious concerns that the confluence of changes proposed in the SNPRM—the expansion of the definition of “operator,” the potential for plugin providers to be subject to COPPA based on actions of website publishers of which they are unaware, and the lack of clarity around whether a plugin provider will violate COPPA by using data collected in order to operate the service of which the plugin is a part—all dramatically increase the risks faced by entities that wish to distribute plugins and other tools that enhance the utility and value of the Internet. In the aggregate, these changes exceed the authority that Congress granted to the Commission in COPPA. Just as Congress worried that unchecked liability would stifle the growth of the Internet when it adopted Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbor provisions, the absence of clear standards around the circumstances under which liability attaches under COPPA is likely to create serious disincentives against growth in Internet technologies.

    Read the whole letter here (pdf).

    For more on kids and Facebook use, read this and this.

  • Facebook Launches A New Social Plugin For Shared Activity

    Facebook announced today that it is launching a new social plugin called Shared Activity. With the plugin, developers can give people a way to control the activity they share to Facebook from their web apps.

    “The plugin provides a simple solution for implementing the user controls required when working with Open Graph built-in actions,” explains Facebook’s Andrew Chen. “From the plugin on sites such as Airbnb, people can set the default Facebook audience for activity shared from your app, or manage the settings for stories previously published to Facebook, including selecting an audience or removing it altogether.”

    The plugin lists people’s activities published from the app to Facebook, such as Open Graph activities, Like button stories, and comment plugin activity.

    Shared Activity plugin

    “For example, when an individual uses a music app, she could modify the privacy settings, through the plugin, for specific song listening activities, without needing to go back to Facebook to control what’s shown,” says Chen. “Similarly, if a person, through a travel app, likes a restaurant or reviews a hotel, and decides that these activities should only be viewable to a select group on friends on Facebook, he can control this within the plugin as well.”

    Documentation for the plugin can be found here.

  • Social Adoption Report: Facebook “Like” Still King, Google “+1” On The Rise

    According to new research, adoption of social plugins by top websites is up all around, but the Google +1 button is seeing the fastest growth.

    BrightEdge, an “enterprise SEO platform,” has analyzed month-over-month adoption trends of popular social plugins across the top 10,000 websites in the world.

    And according to their data, Facebook it still the king of the plugins. In the top 10,000 sites, 10.8% have adopted the Facebook “Like” button. A much smaller 6.1% have installed the Facebook “Like” box.

    But that 6.1% dwarfs the meager 2.1% that have adopted the Twitter Share button and the 1.3% that have adopted the Twitter Instant Follow plugin.

    As of July, 4.5% of the top websites have gotten the Google +1 button. Although that pales in comparison to the 10.8% that have the “Like” button, it is the one with the most increased adoption in the last month. +1 adoption has risen 1%, way more than Facebook’s “like” button, which has only increased 0.3%. The Twitter Share button has only increased 0.1%.

    It’s possible that the Google +1 button saw more integration due to the buzz surrounding the launch of the Google+ social network. Don’t get the two confused – they are separate entities. It’s also important to note that no specific plugin that was part of BrightEdge’s analysis fell in adoption in the last month.

    The study also looked at the adoption of social links, i.e. on-site links to the site’s page on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. They found that out of the top global properties, 51% had no link to their Facebook or Twitter page.

    These people are missing a big opportunity, says BrightEdge –

    This is clearly a missed opportunity for the brands that own web properties that are not “social aware”. They are missing out on a massive audience engagement driver as the major social networks have garnered quite a following with Facebook alone boasting a mind boggling 700million active users spending over 750 billion minutes per month on the site.

    For the top 10,000 sites, the majority who have adopted social links have linked to Facebook and Twitter. These links are up from last month. The only social media outlet to lose website linkages was YouTube.

    Has your site adopted the Google +1 button? Are you seeing interaction with it? Let us know in the comments.

    [Hat Tip to Search Engine Land]

  • Facebook Send Button Should Send Targeted Traffic to Your Site

    Facebook just launched a new social plugin called the “send” button. Like the “like” button before it, the plugin has the potential to drive traffic to content. The difference is that where the “like” button is for people to publicly share something with their friends, the “send” button is more for personal sharing. You can send something directly to a single person or to a specific group of people.

    “We designed the Send button to be used alongside the Like button,” says Facebook’s Abe Parvand. “By including both on your website, people will have ability to broadcast the things they like and also send it to specific people.”

    “The Send button drives traffic by letting users send a link and a short message to the people that would be most interested,” he says. “They don’t need to leave the web page they’re on or fill out a long, annoying form. Compared to the alternatives, the Send button has fewer required steps, and it removes the need to look up email addresses by auto-suggesting friends and Groups.”

    Facebook Send Button

    Publishers, marketers, and site-owners will no doubt rush to get this on their sites, and why not? It has the potential to be clicked as much as the like button, if not more so, if you ask me.

    I know I’ve certainly been in the position plenty of times when I came across a piece of content and wanted to share it directly with a specific person. There are tools out there that allow you to do that already, but this will make it much easier and encourage this type of activity.

    The traffic it drives should be highly targeted. You’re going to send something to a specific person when you feel that that contents specifically relevant to that person. Presumably this is someone you know fairly well. That’s much better targeting that clicking a like button and hoping someone in your circle of friends cares whether or not you like it.

    This button will be a hit.

    By the way, Facebook says it will be adding send button metrics to the Insights dashboard in the coming days. So there’s that too.

    Instructions on how to add the button here.

  • More Opportunities To Gain Traffic From Facebook Likes

    Facebook continues to make changes that have implications for benefiting businesses and driving traffic. They have now launched three new updates to its Like button social plugin. First is the ability to like canvas URLs for Facebook apps that represent things like causes, movies, or other real world objects. Second is the ability to link a Like button to a Facebook Page. Third is the "box count" layout that displays the total number of likes above the button.

    Do you consider Facebook likes important to your online marketing strategy? Let us know. 

    "Since we launched social plugins in April, we’ve been listening to user feedback and working with developers to optimize the Like button to make it as seamless as possible for people to like content around the web and share it with their friends," says Facebook Platform engineer Jerry Cain.

     

    The ability to like canvas URLs in apps means that app users can like pages from within an app. This will then place a like in the user’s newsfeed, linking to the app. This could help app growth tremendously.
     
    Page owners now have the option to either use the Like button or the Like box to encourage user engagement, with like buttons linked to Facebook Pages. 
     

    Facebook's Open Graph

    As far as the box count format for the like button, Cain says, "This layout provides another option to suit different website designs. To determine which Like button is most effective at driving referral traffic for your site, use our ref attribute for tracking."

    Some Other Things to Keep in Mind

    1. Consumers want to interact with brands on Facebook (and Twitter for that matter). WebProNews reported earlier this week on a study from ExactTarget, which found this to be the case. 
     
    "Consumers don’t isolate their communications to email, Facebook or Twitter and expect brands to communicate consistently across the channels," says ExactTarget‘s Jeff Rohrs.

    The study found that 93% of online consumers subscribe to email marketing messages, 38% are fans of brands on Facebook and 5% follow brands on Twitter.

    2. Facebook has been testing a feature that would make it much more valuable for search. The feature has Facebook showing all liked articles in its search results. The results, as AllFacebook describes, show content based on the number of likes and the number of friends who liked that object. 

    "The search results have now become dramatically more relevant with the inclusion of recent news articles, something that previously wasn’t accessible via Facebook’s open graph search results," says AllFacebook’s Nick O’Neill. "Currently, the search results only appear within the drop down from Facebook’s search box, however I’d assume that this will eventually shift to Facebook’s search area, which has yet to undergo a significant overhaul."

    3. Facebook is also testing subscriptions, which would let users "subscribe" to others. This means they would get notifications when a new status update is made. You can clearly see the advantages of this from the brand standpoint, no doubt. 
    Facebook likes have quickly become an integral part of online content marketing and driving traffic/engagement. It is good that Facebook continues to add options around its social plugins, and the company will likely increase those options has time goes on.

    Which feature that Facebook has launched or is testing do you think has the most potential to help you get more traffic? Share your thoughts.

  • Facebook Social Plugins on 100,000 Sites Since Launch

    Facebook launched its new social plug-ins at its F8 developer conference last month, as part of the company’s Open Graph initiative. It was no surprise that so many sites rushed to implement them.

    "It’s only been two and a half weeks since f8 and in that time more than 100,000 sites have tapped into the social graph by implementing Facebook’s social plugins," a representative for Facebook tells WebProNews.

    "From news and publishing, to entertainment and sports, a wide range of industries and verticals have integrated with Facebook’s tools to boost engagement and give people a more personalized experience online," she adds.

    Globe and Mail use of Facebook Social Plugins to increase referrals

    She also shared some interesting stats from some noteworthy sites who have implemented the plug-ins and/or Facebook log-ins:

    – Globe and Mail – 80% increase of Facebook referral traffic

    –  The Washington Post – Facebook referral traffic has increased by 290%

    – IMDb.com – Daily referral traffic from Facebook has doubled; users have generated more than 350,000 likes

    – NHL.com – Seeing an 80% increase in referral traffic from Facebook

    – Scribd – Referral traffic from Facebook has doubled as authors gain followers among groups of Facebook friends

    – Personera – Facebook users generate 50% more pageviews, spend 25% more time on site, and have a 20% lower bounce rate

    – Simply Hired – Users who log in with Facebook are twice as engaged as non-Facebook users

    "We think the story behind these stats is more important than the stats themselves," says Facebook’s Justin Osofsky. "As we’ve found on Facebook, people share, read, and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends and people they know and trust."

    Facebook’s integration with Yelp drew a bit of bad press, as it exposed a security flaw, but that was quickly patched. Still, some are wondering if we will see these types of things start happening more often as more sites implement Facebook functionality.

  • Facebook Exciting Publishers with Increased Referrals

    After just a week, 50,000 sites across the Web had already implemented the new Facebook social plugins announced at the company’s recent developer conference F8. By now, that number has no doubt grown significantly.

    We’ve written about Facebook’s announcements and these plugins numerous times, but while we’ve been mostly talking about their implications and what they could mean for your business, some sites are already seeing a great deal of value right of the bat.

    Have you seen an increase in traffic from Facebook since adding its new plugins? Comment here.

    Mallary Jean Tenore at Poynter.org spoke with Jonathan Dube, vice president in charge of ABCNews.com about the implementation of the plugins, and he said, "We’ve seen an over 250 percent increase in referrals from Facebook to ABC News since the launch of the Social toolkit on ABCNews.com."

    "We’ve opted to place the Facebook recommendations higher than the most popular recommendations, and the reason we’ve done so is because we believe that recommendations from people who are friends of yours are probably more likely to be stories that you’re interested in than a general ‘Most Popular’ list," said Dube. (HT: lostremote)

    ABC News uses Facebook plugins for increased referrals

    Sidenote: Of course there are plenty of ways to use Facebook that existed before the company’s recent announcements. WebProNews discussed some of these with Greg Finn of 10e20 at SMX West a while back:

    While publishers are ecstatic about the opportunities they are getting from Facebook’s new plugins and Open Graph initiative, not all of Facebook’s users are so upbeat. Privacy concerns have of course been in the headlines a lot since F8, and they have even led to Facebook losing some of its users.

    Border Stylo’s Dan Yoder has an interesting top ten list of reasons to delete your Facebook account, and some of Google’s team have publicly opted to deactivate their Facebook accounts, but whether this is due to actual concerns or to personal protest to a growing competitor is hard to determine.

    It’s hard to say if Facebook will lose enough users to amount to any significant number, but my guess is that it won’t – at least not anytime soon. I’d be surprised if they are not gaining more users than they’re losing. As Facebook takes over more and more sites, non-Facebook users are more likely to get sucked in.

    Out of Facebook’s 400 million+ users, I’m guessing a substantial amount of them like the social network too much to give it up, and aren’t really concerned about sites having access to information like what bands and movies they like. Many are way too invested in Farmville to stop now.

    Have you considered shutting down your Facebook account? Let us know.