Facebook for iPhone adds image sync and push notifications

As per usual, this is a super quick blog post, but i downloaded the latest Facebook application for the iPhone and noted some new changes. Firstly you get the ability to sync your contact images with that of your friends on Facebook. Could this mean the death of apps like FriendSync? However you still cannot copy the entire Facebook phonebook to your device, which doesn’t bother me but i am sure a lot of people would like it.

Secondly you can know get push notifications for Messages, Wall Posts, Comments, Tagged pictures and a couple of other things.

Mashable has a pretty good write up which i have blatantly stolen and pasted below…

Up until now, the Facebook iPhone app [iTunes link] had everything but push notifications. The launch of version 3.1, however, remedies that ill. The other 3.1 biggie is the ability to sync your Facebook friends with your phone’s address book contacts — photos and all.

Push Notifications

When 3.0 came out this summer, there were some vocal complaints that the Facebook (Facebook) iPhone (iPhone) app didn’t do push notifications; it seems like basic functionality for any post-iPhone OS 3.0 application. Now when you start the app up after updating, you’ll be prompted asking if it’s okay to do notifications. Once you’ve said yes, it follows the standard iPhone notifications rules. You can customize what you’ll receive in settings.

Address Book Syncing

Right after you allow or deny notifications at the beginning, you’ll be asked if you want to sync with your address book. It will sync personal data, and change your contacts’ listed homepages to their Facebook profile URLs if they didn’t list anything themselves. You can choose whether or not to sync profile pictures, but that’s the only customization option you have. Still, it’s a very welcome feature.

A Minor Quibble

You’ll probably want to customize your push notification settings right away, because we quickly discovered that all notifications options are on by default: messages, wall posts, friend requests, friend confirmations, photo tags, events and comments. It can get a little spammy, and if you already have e-mail notifications set up (and push e-mail on your phone) you’ll end up getting double notifications for some things. It’s a small hassle, but easily sorted out.

Let me know what you think :o)

Advertising Acronyms: How These Rats Are Gnawing At Your ROI

I’ve known for over a year now that acronyms are absolute garbage when it comes to keywords. Today, I’m going to explain why and demonstrate with a few examples.

It’s a known fact that the more specific the intent of a keyword, the better search marketers can convert the traffic. In non-geek marketing speak, the more your prospects know what they want, the easier it is to close the sale.

That’s because they can explain it to you more precisely, so you can do a better job responding to their needs.

So why are acronyms awful keywords?

With acronyms, your task is doubly difficult.

First, you have the problem that, as with other short-tail keywords, there are plenty of things the searcher might have in mind. Someone looking for “ballet” may be interested in the Bolshoi Ballet Theatre of Moscow, in ballet shoes, in ballet music etc.

Second, one acronym can stand for many things. At least with ballet you can exclude the possibility someone is looking for football boots. But consider this acronym, “CCQ.”

To anyone in the Quebec legal profession, that stands for Civil Code of Quebec.

To anyone with a Mozilla Firefox-Google address bar, (in Quebec, at least) typing in CCQ gets you the Commission de la Construction du Quebec, which means that the Commission is Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” search result.

CCQ acronym ppc

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s an ad that showed up in my Gmail account where the subject line included the exclamation, “WOW!”

WOW acronym keyword advertising bidding

Similarly, I was recently studying for an exam on international law that covered the International Criminal Court, or ICC for short. I saw – and clicked on – this ad:

ICC acronym ads

Makes sense, right? Looks like an ad offering the ability to look through the archive of decisions the ICC has rendered?

Turns out the ad offered exactly what it promised… only the ICC meant the International Chamber of Commerce!

So acronyms are also bad for a third reason, which is that their ambiguity works both to attract useless impressions [which lower your CTR and drive your bids up] as well as to attract useless clicks [which drive your ROI down].

The bottom line is that acronyms, like rats, need to be purged. Your advertising ROI depends on it.

Facebook users are loyal, just like your pet dog

*Blows dust of keyboard*

Its been a long time since i blogged here. Its kinda weird ya know, if i get a nice little run going then i really get into blogging, but if i stop for a month or so whilst i am trafficking small children across the globe it kind of ruins my stride.

Silly jokes aside though, i just read a post on Mashable which reaffirms what I have been saying for ages when i have been championing technologies like Facebook connect. Users who visit your site from Social Media websites are loyal and they will return, why? Because they probably found your site through a friends recommendation, and people are friends because they have things in common, well either that or they have lots a chocolate chip cookies that they like to give out.

Since i am lazy and i have said all i want to say at 17:24 on a Tuesday afternoon, i am just going to quote the Mashable post about this…

That’s the subject of a new study by ad network Chitika, who analysed the browsing habits of 33 million unique users over the course of September.

According to their findings, Facebook provides the most loyal visitors, with 20% of those that originate from the social network in turn visiting the site they landed upon four or more times in a week. Among other social media sites, Digg traffic produced loyal users 16% of the time, while Twitter traffic was only good for 11% loyalty.

In the realm of search engines, Yahoo provides the most loyal visitors at 15%, followed by Google and Bing with around 12% each.

loyalty-chitika

So just remember, it is always worth having a presence on social media sites, just make sure you do it properly.

VModa Marketing FAIL!

Update: So after tweeting about my blog post a few people retweeted, now VModa have sent an @reply to myself and some other people saying that we won the beanie competition. Did I jump the gun and write this post too early, or did the very essence of me writing this post make VModa sort it out? I don’t know but props to them for getting it sorted anyway, and tbh i do like their headphones 🙂

Picture 1

So a few months back i bought a pair of V-Moda headphones, i would link you to it but i can’t be bothered to create an Amazon affiliate ID so you can search it yourself 🙂 Err, anyway, yeah back to the blog post. So i bought these headphones and had some problems with them, as such i decided to follow @Vmoda on twitter and send them a tweet about how my headphones had messed up and i wanted them replaced.

Everything was all good and i got them replaced, but i kept an eye on V-Moda to see how they were marketing their products on Twitter etc. So yesterday they create a tweet saying “Win a V-Moda beanie! First 5 to answer this. What are the ones and two’s”?

Well the obvious answer is that they are decks. Never being one to pass up on a free beanie i decided to answer, to ensure i didn’t miss out i decided to do a search for @vmoda n see who else had managed to respond, looks like i was the 2nd to respond but the 1st with the right answer (I ROCK! – see image below).

vmoda

So looks like i have won a beanie hat right? Errrr wrong. I sent ANOTHER tweet to V-Moda jokingly asking “where’s my beanie” but they didn’t respond. Regardless of the glorious London sun at the moment I wanted my free prize, so checked twitter today to see if there was any response from V-Moda, none! I thought well i will check their Twitter page, see if there is any announcement about it… err none, and what’s more they have DELETED the original tweet (FAIL! – see image below).

Picture 2Now i know that the prize was a a shitty beanie, and i know that perhaps someone decided to do such a thing without permission from their elders, however, if someone in your company created a little competition for a prize which probably cost about 0.00000000000000000000001% of your daily turnover, then it is advisable to at least see it through and NOT cover up the evidence that you ever tried it.

I feel cheated out of my beanie hat V-Moda, but more importantly, I think it sucks that you pulled a social-media-back-peddle stunt like that.

Google Easter Egg

I have been a very very naughty boy and not updated my blog in over a month, i will get some more substantial blog posts up soon, but for now have a cool Easter egg i found on Google.

If you don’t get it then you are stupid, simple as that :p

recursion