Facebook Like gate is no more

Finally, Facebook wants you to really like a page in order to press the button like..

According to developers.facebook.com:

The liked field will no longer be returned in the page property of the signed_request object for Page Tab apps created from today onwards. For apps created before today, from November 5, 2014 (90 days from today), the liked property will always return true regardless of whether or not the person has liked the page.

What does this mean

This means that when you use a custom page app, for example a contest or a sweepstake you can't anymore force your audience to like your page prior to use your app.

This is actually a good thing. "Like hunting"  was never good for a business.  Facebook now wants Pages to collect more genuine fans, and not those who became fans for a random sweepstakes prize.

Here is what they say:

You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, check-in at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page.

and they continue:

To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

So now what?

As we said, this new update to remove the “Like Gate” is a great move by Facebook. Businesses will now be able to attract more quality fans using Facebook apps instead of attracting those who only like for the incentive. Of course you can still ask people to like your Page through an app, like “Please like us to receive updates!” 

Get viral with Pinterest "Rich Pins"

What are Rich Pins?

Rich Pins are Pins that include extra information right on the Pin itself.
There are five types of Rich Pins:

• movie, 
• recipe, 
• article, 
• product and 
• place

but according to pinterest there are more to come.

Lets take a look one by one

Place Pins

Place Pins include 

• A map, 
• Address, and 
• Phone number.

Make your own place board

Creating a board of Place Pins is easy. Just select Add a map when you create a new board or Edit an existing board’s settings to Add a map. After that, you can map all of your new and existing Pins on the board to help plan your next adventure.

Create boards with friends

Collaborate on a group board and plan ideas for weekend activities around town. Have a friend who’s going somewhere you’ve visited before? You can now send a board with your favorite restaurants and must-see sights.

Article Pins 

Article Pins include 

• Story headline, 
• Author Name, 
• A Description of the Story (like your meta description) and  
• Source URL

helping Pinners find and save stories that matter to them.

Pinterest will also retroactively adjust the look and feel of articles you've pinned in the past, so your old stuff will get the new, sexy look.

Product Pins 

Now that makes it easy for people to buy your stuff. Product Pins include 

• Real time pricing, 
• Availability and 
• Where to buy. 

Pinners also get notifications when product Pins they've added drop in price.

Hint: Shopify now supports Product pins.

Recipe Pins 

Recipe Pins include 

• ingredients, 
• cooking times and 
• serving info 

to get Pinterest cooks excited to hit the kitchen. Recipe search filters help Pinners narrow in on vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, paleo and indulgent meal ideas.

Movie Pins

Movie Pins include 

• Ratings, 
• Cast members and 
• Reviews 

to help Pinners learn about new flicks.

How to use all this stuff

To get started, you'll need to prep your website with meta tags, test out your Rich Pins and apply to get them on Pinterest. 

In fact Pinterst supports two collection methods: oEmbed and semantic markup (Schema.org and Open Graph). We really suggest Schema.org method. If you're not technical, you might want to ask your developer or site owner to help get you going!

Pinterest: Introducing a new Follow button

People visit many different websites each day, and it can be hard for them to find and follow those businesses back on Pinterest. Helping people find the latest Pins from their favorite brands and publishers on Pinterest is an important way for them to discover stuff they like, and we’re hoping to make that easier today with an updated Follow button.

What's new about the new follow Button

The new Follow button will pop up a small dialog with a preview of your account’s latest Pins — and your visitors won’t ever have to leave your website to follow you. Once someone follows your account, they’ll start seeing your Pins in their home feed.

How Can you get the new follow button

It’s easy to add this button to your site. It’s just a couple of lines of code, which you can copy and paste onto your pages in a matter of minutes.
You can get the new Follow button on pinterest widget builder.

I Have already the pinterest button on my website

If you have the original Follow button in place, you won’t have to do anything to get the new version—it’ll just work! 

Facebook: 30M small business pages, 19M manage via mobile.

Facebook for business announced today that 30 million small business Pages have a business page on their platform worldwide.

Additionally nearly two-thirds of these business owners –19 million– are actively managing their Pages via mobile. this is a testament to the growing importance of a mobile marketing presence.

To Celebrate we made a new upgrade on the New Cover image that you can find it here. You can also download it here as psd.

Find more about us on yoconta.com.

facebook f8 2014

The last time Facebook held a conference for app developers was in 2011. That was before the company attracted 1.28 billion users, before it went public, before it began showing mobile advertisements and before it paid eye-popping amounts of money to acquire popular apps like Instagram and WhatsApp.

This time we have news from facebook that are amazing for all.

Anonymous logins

Facebook says it will let users log in to apps anonymously, without sharing their identities and personal information with mobile applications they don’t trust.

Facebook’s users can already use a “log in with Facebook” button to sign up for apps that let them listen to music, play games, read the news and monitor fitness activities. But using the button allows apps to access information related to the Facebook user’s identity.

With the anonymous login, which is black instead of Facebook's iconic blue, lets members easily log in to applications without a username or password, but without the sometimes unnerving commitment of handing over personal Facebook data to an untrusted source. 

Is this good or bad for apps

We agree with Zuckerberg. He said that this way facebook users will have the chance to use more apps and developers on the other hand will have to build a trust with those users.

Facebook's Audience Network

This is BIG news. 

The new "Audience Network" will let marketers push their Facebook ads off the social network and into apps who sign up to participate in the network. Advertisers can choose to run banner, interstitial, or native ads off Facebook to encourage app installs and other activities, and they can take advantage of Facebook's usual targeting and measurement tools.

Facebook revamps Pages

Facebook revamps Pages on the desktop with new one-column Timeline design to match user profiles.

This week, we’ll begin rolling out a streamlined look for Pages on desktop that will make it easier for people to find the information they want and help Page admins find the tools they use most. Here are the key features of the update:

You’ll notice that the left-side column includes all the information about the Page, including a map, possible hours of business, phone number, website URL, as well as photos and videos. This is further confirmation by Facebook that the previous multiple-column design was simply too confusing; the company has decided to put all posts on the right side and all other information on the left.

Read the original post by facebook here.

Facebook creates a better Way to Organize Your Ads

There is no secret. Facebook ad mechanism is on of the best for local businesses. It gives you the way to address to people near you and increase you local fan base.
Facebook just made simpler the way it organize its ad structure so now there are three levels of organization:  campaigns, ad sets and ads.

Let see the new structure

Campaigns

It's now easier to organize your campaigns around objectives to get better optimization and reporting on your ads.

Ad Sets (new)

You can have multiple ad sets in a campaign, each with its own budget and schedule. Create ad sets for each audience to optimize your ads for each one and measure their response.

Ads

Ads will still work the same as before, with controls for targeting, creative and placement.

What about existing campaigns?

• Your ads have not changed.
  This migration will not affect your ad performance, and all your historical data is still available.
• Each campaign has one ad set.
  The ad set contains the original budget, schedule and status of your campaign.

Conclusion

By adding an extra level, facebook makes campaign handling easier if you want to use different audiences, make split tests and compare your campaign results. 

If you have a simple campaign you can use one ad set per campaign.

Wow! Free Getty images!

The world's largest photo service just made its pictures free to use.
If you go to the Getty Images website, you'll see millions of images, all watermarked. There are more than a hundred years of photography here, from FDR on the campaign trail to last Sunday's Oscars, all stamped with the same transparent square placard reminding you that you don't own the rights. If you want Getty to take off the watermark, you'll have to pay for it.

What is changing

Starting now, that's going to change. Getty Images is dropping the watermark for the bulk of its collection, in exchange for an open-embed program that will let users drop in any image they want, as long as the service gets to append a footer at the bottom of the picture with a credit and link to the licensing page.

Why this change occured

According to Craig Peters, a business development exec at Getty Images, "if you want to get a Getty image today, you can find it without a watermark very simply,". "The way you do that is you go to one of our customer sites and you right-click. Or you go to Google Image search or Bing Image Search and you get it there. And that's what's happening… Our content was everywhere already."

Why is that great

Now if you have a small business and you want some stock image to use, you can do it easily by embedding one from http://www.gettyimages.com. It's easy. 

How to use it

Just click on the photo you want and get the embed code. 

It's easy!

Facebook buys WatchApp

Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion!!! 

This is the biggest deal for Facebook ever. The previous Biggest deal for Facebook was Instagram, which it bought for about $1 billion in 2012. In addition to that Viber’s was acquired by Japanese company Rakuten for $900 million and of course Skype was acquired by Microsoft for $8.5 billion.

Lets see what was the deal exactly:

Facebook will acquire WhatsApp for approximately $16 billion, consisting of $4 billion in cash plus 184 million shares or approximately $12 billion worth of WhatsApp’s stock. Also, Facebook will grant 46 million RSUs worth approximately $3 billion to WhatsApp employees that will vest over four years subsequent to closing. The stock and RSUs to be issued will represent 7.9% of Facebook’s shares based on current shares and RSUs outstanding. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals, and Facebook expects the deal to close later in 2014. Note that if the deal doesn’t go through, Facebook will still be required to pay $2 billion to WhatsApp under a termination clause.

What does this mean for the average user?

According to WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum nothing.

“It was important for us to build a product not cluttered by gimmicks or promotions and be part of mission to build something to connect people. It is because of those values today we have 465 million monthly active users. Almost one third of a billion people use our product today to stay in touch. We promise not to change and to continue to build what is important to us – using the philosophy of using a product to help people connect,” 

What is next for WhatsApp

According to Jan over the next months (until June) the app will add voice calls feature. The announcement was made in the MWC 2014. That is quite a big change so all the big players in www have now a telecommunication company on their portfolio

• Google - Hangouts
• Facebook - WhatsApp
• Microsoft - Skype