Update, 10/11/2011: Facebook has postponed the beta version of timeline afterTimeline.comfiled a lawsuit. Timeline is currently only available to those who have Facebook’s Developer application installed.
I've been playing around with the Facebook changes recently announced at f8 in San Francisco and freaking most of the public out soon thereafter. The real-time ticker and subscribe button makes sharing quicker and easier. The popular stories and recent stories seem to be confusing.
The feature that's really caught my eye is the timeline. The timeline rolls out to the public around October 6. To sample it ahead of time, you can access it through the developer apps. For personal users, the attraction of the timeline is obvious: it's attractive, artistic, much like a scrapbooking page layout. The timeline is fun – with one click you can go back to any year, any month and see status updates, photos and important events. It was described by Nir Refuah, vice president of McCann Digital in Israel, as “a digital autobiography.” Refuah said, “First Facebook became the digital ID of everyone, and now it will try to gather our whole life story,”
For brands, the attraction is more subtle. I had trouble at first understanding why a brand would like the new timeline, then the content developer in me kicked in. The timeline's all about story – history -- content. Acquiring as many 'likes” as you can is no longer a driving force. For content-driven non-competitive people like me, that is great news. Awesome content is what will get you in the stream. The popularity contest is no longer about star power, it's about authenticity and the human component of your business. Campaigning for the most “likes” won't do much for you.
To sum up what I've learned so far, the timeline benefits for your business include:
The cover. The cover is a big photo across the top of your page. It is prime real estate and very easy to change. This will be great for promotions and product roll-outs.
The Information blurb. Currently, a viewer has to dig deep to find a company's information tab. When found, it is surprisingly limited, weak and bland. The new timeline will feature the information right under the cover, above the fold, in an easy-to-read format, easy to click through to more info.
Infographic format. The new timeline format will propel brands to focus more on engagement and back story rather than getting more likes. Getting more comments and likes becomes less valuable than sharing authentic content. I believe the mom and pop shops that I serve will benefit more from this than the big corporations. Mom and Pop have real stories involving real people. Mom and Pop shops have a back story and biography that is generally more personable than the giant conglomerates. Admittedly, I'm a little biased on that.
The timeline rolls out soon for personal facebook pages. I'm not sure when it rolls out for brands and business pages.
Just when I was starting to flirt with Google+, Facebook has gotten back in the game and lured me back. Imagine that.
Google’s Instant Preview feature gives new meaning to the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
The Instant Preview feature was rolled out without much fanfare so you may or may not be aware of it. Opinions vary on how much it affects SEM (Search Engine Marketing) or SEO (Search Engine Optimization,) but most strategists agree it places much more importance on design than ever before.
The Instant Preview feature provides a graphic overview of search results and enables people to preview the results right on the results page. This is done through the use of a magnifying glass icon to the right of your search results.
When you search on a word or phrase, a whole page of search results will be produced. To the right of each result is a magnifying glass icon. Click this icon and a preview of the website appears in a pop up with a snippet enlarged that contains your search words highlighted. Once activating Instant Previews with that one click, you can hover over any other search result to see a preview of the web page. It is easy to skim down the page quickly and glance at the websites, almost like flipping through a magazine.
The benefits of Instant Preview:
Saves time. You can quickly compare between search results before clicking on any.
Accuracy. You will know at a glance if this site is what he/she is looking for. Also, this feature will decrease the bait and switch tactic of using keywords to lure traffic only to disappoint upon arrival.
May reduce Adwords charges. Currently for Adwords, you pay per click. The Instant Preview (free) will prevent clicks as searchers see the site before going there.
Should increase CTR (click-through rates) and decrease bounce rates.
How can you take advantage of Instant Preview:
Fix your landing pages. More images, less copy writing. Larger headers. Small print won’t show up on the Instant Previews, but the headlines will.
Design matters. Does the look of your page convey your message? Potential visitors will decide whether to visit your site without even reading any content, they’ll decide from just one view.
Reduce your clutter. Sign Up boxes, social media icons, ads, sidebar clutter will not show up well on the preview. Put them near the bottom of the page. Get rid of rotating flash headers.
Eliminate Forms. Nobody is attracted to a site where they have to fill out a bunch of information.
Clean-Up a little. Eliminate a few colors and typefaces, be consistent.
I peeked through some of our sites to see how we were holding up. I was very happy with The Race Shop’s look:
I think Tyler Brothers has an appealing look and is very clear on what you’ll find at their site, however, the slideshow at the top doesn’t show up. There’s just a blank white space. The video shows up as black space, too, but I can live with that. The white space has to go though.
When I search on TroutU Perfect Fly, one result looks great, but another doesn’t look so great. The first is their facebook page:
The second is a page that discusses Abram’s Creek, it’s all text and not visually obvious that I can purchase Perfect Flies here. The highlighted snippet, if I read it, tells me where to go to purchase the flies. It’s just not obvious that this is the site I need if I want to purchase a Perfect Fly. But honestly, that’s not the purpose of that page anyway, it just got sucked into the keyword search vortex.
I had one glitch in my Instant Preview experience – I could not get it to work on IE7. Apparently, this is common. If you experience this, you should be able to click on Tools > Compatibility View Settings and uncheck the "Display intranet sites in Compatibility View" checkbox. I still could not get that to work and I think it’s because on my computer, the system administrator controls that.
Go out and play around with it, see what you think. Is this a strong enough tool to affect website design and banner advertising? Maybe. Maybe not.
Like most people, I started doing business with GoDaddy a long time ago, when I first started registering Domain names. Actually, my first domain—sliker.com in 1997—was done through Network Solutions, who I think had a monopoly back then. But like most people, when GoDaddy came out with $9.99 domains it was irresistible. Since then I have had hundreds of domain registrations and renewals at GoDaddy, and two different hosting accounts for my various customer sites and my own Web properties.
While I still host my domains their, I left Godaddy hosting for HostGator In 2007, when I first got turned on to Drupal. GoDaddy has a very unorthodox hosting system and does not support standard tools such as CPanel and Web Host Manager (WHM) for managing LAMP hosting. (LAMP is an acronym for Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP, which is the open source platform that Drupal runs on. At the time I left, the only way to install and run Drupal was using Fantastico, which was very limiting. Since then, they’ve improved their Drupal support—I recent did a job for [county bounty] and created a Drupal Multi-site on GoDaddy’s hosting system. It worked out fine, but it was difficult due to the odd programs and interfaces we had to use.
The other reason I was glad to leave GoDaddy was due to the company’s marketing and the general attitude of the owner, Bob Parsons. When I want to login and check on my domains, I don’t want to feel like I’m checking in to a strip club. Now granted, there is no pornography or nudity on the site, but there is a lot of scantily clad women and a general attitude that makes me feel kind of … dirty. I would just prefer not to participate, or limit my participation to a bare minimum.
Meanwhile… HostGator has been great! They have great service. Their ticketing system and engineers are top notch. Their phone support is very good. And I love the online chat support—I can talk to a tech support agent via chat at any time of day or night. The HostGator experience has been all good, and I highly recommend them for your Drupal hosting.
A friend of mine recently acquired a Ford 8N tractor, and has decided to rebuild the entire tractor, including the engine, piece by piece. He said he had purchased some videos online that show him in great detail what he needs to do. He bought two videos for $25 each.
