The Explore London 2012 page, 18 months in the making, and the culmination of a partnership with the IOC and the London Olympic Organising Committee (LOCOG) will enable users online access to their chosen athletes, sports and countries.

“I think that anything that simplifies, or makes it a little bit easier to understand or follow the people you like, has got to be a good thing,” IOC Director of Communications Mark Adams said.

The IOC said the page was part of a non-commercial project with Facebook.

Facebook will be subject to the strict rules which govern Olympic sponsorship, marketing and videos, meaning they will not display advertising around its Explore London 2012 page and athletes will not be able to post videos of themselves in the Games venues.

Facebook’s EMEA director of platform partnerships Christian Hernandez said the Olympics had previously been a “curated experience”, with broadcasters dictating what viewers outside the stadium could see, but that was set to change as the social media age handed users the power to decide what they want to watch.

The Facebook page will show users the full range of different competitions being staged at any time and enable them to see which broadcasters are showing the event, and in some instances, let them click straight through to watch it online.

“You’ll be able to consume the Olympics the way you want,” Hernandez said at a launch event held in Facebook’s trendy London head office, and attended by 1992 Olympic tennis gold medalist Boris Becker.

There will also be a deeper view of life in the Olympic village, as competitors post comments, photographs and videos on the Explore London 2012 page, giving fans the inside line on their Games experience.

“In the past, stories that were not headline-worthy, they could never reach the public. At this Olympic games, no story will go untold,” Facebook’s managing director in EMEA, Joanna Shields said.

The page, which counts Australian five-times Olympic gold medalist swimmer Ian Thorpe and Britain’s 5,000 meters world champion Mo Farah among its participants, has a long way to go, however, before every viewer can follow their chosen sports heroes.

To date, only about 200 of the 10,500 competitors expected in London have signed up, said Facebook.

(Reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Alison Wildey)

Most of us have seen some pretty cool and creative campaigns and use of imagery on Facebook, especially with the new Facebook Timeline. But what about Twitter?

Well today i saw something pretty cool. The people behind the Smart Car in Argentina Twitter account have done something really cool with their twitter feed . They have Tweeted 456 times and 455 of those tweets are dedicated to creating the most creative thing I’ve seen on Twitter to date.

Go to the  Smart Car Argentina Feed and the hold “J” down on your keyboard , and you will see what I am talking about  When you do this you will scroll down the Smart Car Argentina’s Twitter feed, creating a cool digital flip-book feature.

The brief ad, created by BBDO Argentina to launch the Smart feed, uses “animated” frames as tweets to create a flipbook effect. The famed “city car” is shown traveling down a bustling street, like notes plunked down on top of sheet music.

Since I first looked at their account their following has grown rapidly.

Check out the video below to see the  Flipbook in action by clicking here 

LynsLot

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So I’ve bitten the bullet and leaped across the pond to broaden my horizons in London.  I had thought about it for a long time and just kept putting it off. There was a lot of “what ifs”, but a friend of mine once said to me, if you’re scared, jump anyway. So here I am.

I am still trying to get my bearings and life without a car isn’t so bad. Every little helps I say, so I’m getting my daily exercise in as I go about my business.  New places can be daunting but exciting at the same time, but so far I love the hustle and bustle of London. I find myself power walking around the streets (To the “Eye of the Tiger” in my earphones, no lie ) thinking, yeah, this is going to be great. And just as I am feeling on top of the world, full of motivation, I get caught in a hail shower with 5 bags from Asda and no hood. Instead of running for cover like all the people around me I decided to just keep walking.

London is obviously a much larger place than little Dublin, and thats why I feel it is here that my creativity and experience will grow.

In London outdoor advertising is in abundance. It’s every where you look, here, there, everywhere. I find myself waiting in the Underground taking snap shots of the billboards. Some are bright and full of detail; some are so simple yet still impactfull. Sometimes less is more. One billboard simply had the website address of the company in large writing. I thought, hmm I like it. Reminded me of the Google it campaign I was involved in with Imagine. It calls on the consumer to find out about the company, or product in Imagines case for themselves. No hard sell or examples of benefits. Simply type it into Google.

I’m still waiting to come across that one thing that makes me go , that’s amazing , but I’m only here a few days so I’ve loads of time. I just know there will be a good few campaigns that will spark new ideas for me.

I will keep you up to date with my adventures as LynsLot is let loose inLondon:)

Lyns

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I read an article on Mashable today about how you can earn money by sharing ads on your social networks.

Wingsplay, a start-up that launched last month, that pays its users to share video ads on their social networks. The distribution model is key; it relies heavily on connected social networks. The founder, Olivier Lasry, says the best way for online advertisements to resonate with people is if a link has been recommended by a friend or social media connection.

http://mashable.com/2012/04/10/wingsplay/

You don’t have to like or follow an advertiser for their ads to make it into your feed. They can trickle in from a friend who is signed up to Wingsplay and is trying to make some extra cash from their social networks.

Users on Wingsplay can earn money by sharing up to four video ads per week, Users are paid by cost of view. Wingsplay say the service is not meant to be used to spam social media, but more to drive connections `

“The Web made it almost impossible to reach people with boring ads,” Lasry said. “People don’t care about advertisers who interrupt them. But the opportunity is huge for remarkable video ads, which people actually want to watch and share.”

Wingsplay’s Lasry says that financial incentive is not enough for a person to share a video. He said they actually like the videos they share

“26% of our influencers shared the first videos we distributed on Wingsplay, which shows that influencers only share videos they like, and that the monetary incentive is only part of the experience,” Lasry said.

I signed up to Wingsplay today just to see what it was all about. I recieved a mail saying that my account had been activated and that I will soon be able to participate in their beta launch. I will be interested to see what type od video ads they will want shared.

I will keep you posted

Lyns

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The changes to Facebook seem to be endless at the moment. Not everyone has embraced the new Timeline with open arms and you have some people wishing it would just go away. Personally I love the new Timeline. I think the layout is cleaner and I love the new Cover Photo’s they give more personality to a page or profile.

Since the last fMC event in New York City, there are a lot of articles floating around online explaining all the changes to Facebook in detail.

I’m not going to go into all the details as I’m sure you all know a lot by now, however I am going to go through the changes in ads for Facebook pages. I have had a few people asking me about these changes and also asking what new ads would be available to them.

Officially there were five new Facebook Ad products announced

• Ads that appear in News Feeds
• Ads that run on the right-hand side of your homepage
• Ads within the News Feed on your mobile device
• Ads that appear when you log out
• Offers

click to enlarge

Though Facebook announced Five new ad products only the log-out ads and Offers are really new. The News Feed ads have been out since January, the right hand page ads have run since last year and the mobile ads had been reported accurately by Bloomberg Offers, which is actually free to advertiser, let’s brands share discounts and promotions to their fans within Facebook.

In another post I talked about Edge Ranking and how not all your posts will be seen by all your fans. At the moment Facebook Pages may only reach 16% on average of their fans each week and it is seemingly 12% for a profile.

In one way this is good for a consumer as it means you only see the posts you are interested in and it keeps your newsfeed less blocked up.  Businesses will see it in a different way and they will be asking how can I reach more of my fan base?

Well with Face books new Reach Generator Tool advertisers can pay Facebook on an ongoing basis, as opposed to a CPC or CPM basis, to sponsor one page post every day, and guarantees a 75% reach of the page’s fanbase over a month-long period. The company said that test partners, including Ben & Jerry’s, were able to reach 98% of their page’s fans using Reach Generator, a massive increase over the 16% of fans that Pages, on average, reach without ads or Sponsored Stories.

for more visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/fmc/guides/reach

Anyone who has a Facebook page will always be trying to increase engagement and their reach. You may be asking yourself why is my “Reach” on my posts roughly 2,000 fans when I have 13,000 fans on my page.  At the moment Facebook Pages may only reach 16% on average of their fans each week. It is seemingly 12% for a profile. So its not that you are un popular it’s just not everyone is seeing your posts in their News feeds. This is down to Facebook Edge Ranking

Lets take a look at Facebooks Edge Rank.

EdgeRank is the Facebook algorithm that decides which stories appear in each user’s newsfeed. The algorithm hides boring stories, so if your story doesn’t score well, no one will see it.

The first thing someone sees when they log into Facebook is the newsfeed. This is a summary of what’s been happening recently among their friends on Facebook.

Every action their friends take is a potential newsfeed story. Facebook calls these actions “Edges.” That means whenever a friend posts a status update, comments on another status update, tags a photo, joins a fan page, or RSVP’s to an event it generates an “Edge”, and a story about that Edge might show up in the user’s personal newsfeed.

It’d be completely overwhelming if the newsfeed showed all of the possible stories from your friends. So Facebook created an algorithm to predict how interesting each story will be to each user. Facebook calls this algorithm “EdgeRank” because it ranks the edges. Then they filter each user’s newsfeed to only show the top-ranked stories for that particular user.

How does EdgeRank work?

EdgeRank is like a credit rating: it’s invisible, it’s important, it’s unique to each user, and no one other than Facebook knows knows exactly how it works.

Here are the three ingredients of the algorithm:

• Affinity Score
• Edge Weight
• Time Decay

Affinity Score

Affinity Score means how “connected” a particular user is to the Edge. For example, I’m friends with my brother on Facebook. In addition, I write frequently on his wall, and we have fifty mutual friends. I have a very high affinity score with my brother, so Facebook knows I’ll probably want to see his status updates.

Facebook calculates affinity score by looking at explicit actions that users take, and factoring in 1) the strength of the action, 2) how close the person who took the action was to you, and 3) how long ago they took the action.

Explicit actions include clicking, liking, commenting, tagging, sharing, and friending. Each of these interactions has a different weight that reflects the effort required for the action–more effort from the user demostrates more interest in the content. Commenting on something is worth more than merely liking it, which is worth more than merely clicking on it. Passively viewing a status update in your newsfeed does not count toward affinity score unless you interact with it.

Affinity score measures not only my actions, but also my friends’ actions, and their friends’ actions. For example, if I commented on a fan page, it’s worth more than if my friend commented, which is worth more than if a friend of a friend commented. Not all friends’ actions are treated equally. If I click on someone’s status updates and write on their wall regularly, that person’s actions influence my affinity score significantly more than another friend who I tend to ignore.

Lastly, if I used to interact with someone a lot, but less so now, than their influence will start to wane. Technically, Facebook is just multiplying each action by 1/x, where x is the time since the action happened.

Affinity score is one-way. My brother has a different affinity score to me than I have to him. If I write on my brother’s wall, Facebook knows I care about my brother, but doesn’t know if my brother cares about me.

This may sound confusing, but it’s mostly common sense.

Edge Weight

Each category of edges has a different default weight. In plain English, this means that comments are worth more than likes.

Every action that a user takes creates an edge, and each of those edges, except for clicks, creates a potential story. By default, you are more likely to see a story in your newsfeed about me commenting on a fan page than a story about me liking a fan page.

Facebook changes the edge weights to reflect which type of stories they think user will find most engaging. For example, photos and videos have a higher weight than links. Conceivably, this could be adjusted on a per-user level–if Sam tends to comment on photos, and Michelle comments on links, then Sam will have a higher Edge weight for photos and Michelle will have a higher Edge weight for links. It’s not clear if Facebook does this or not.

As a sidenote, Facebook may actually rank the act of commenting, liking, visiting a fan page, or even fanning a page differently depending on the source. For example, becoming a fan via an ad may have a lower Edge score than becoming a fan by searching for the fan page and then becoming a fan. This makes intuitive sense–the one user is hunting for the page and generally will care more about page stories than someone who had an ad thrust in their face. There is no conclusive proof of this though.

New Facebook features generally have a high Edge weight in order to promote the feature to users. For example, when Facebook Places rolled out, check-ins had a very high default weight for a few months and your newsfeed was probably inundated with stories like “John checked into Old Navy.” Generally, after a few weeks or months Facebook dials the new feature back to a more reasonable weight.

Time Decay

As a story gets older, it loses points because it’s “old news.”

EdgeRank is a running score–not a one-time score. When a user logs into Facebook, their newsfeed is populated with edges that have the highest score at that very moment in time. Your status update will only hit the newsfeed if it has a higher score–at that moment in time–than the other possible newsfeed stories.

Facebook is just multiplying the story by 1/x, where x is the time since the action happened. This may be a linear decay function, or it may be exponential–it’s not clear.

Additionally, Facebook seems to be adjusting this time-decay factor based on 1) how long since the user last logged into Facebook, and 2) how frequently the user logs into Facebook. It’s not clear how exactly this works, but my experiments have shown time-decay changes if I log into Facebook more.

How do I check my EdgeRank Score?

You can measure the effects of EdgeRank by seeing how many people you reached. You can also measure how much engagement you got (which impacts EdgeRank) using a Facebook analytics tool.

But there is no “general EdgeRank score” because each fan has a different affinity score with the page.

Furthermore, Facebook keeps the algorithm a secret, and they’re constantly tweaking it. So the value of comments compared to likes is constantly changing.

Lastly, fan pages never appear in the newsfeed–stories by/about the pages show up. So I really don’t care about the EdgeRank score of the page, I only care about the EdgeRank score of the status update (which is affected by the EdgeRank score of the page).

There will never be a 3rd-party tool that can measure EdgeRank. Too much data is private–eg, if a fan leaves a comment on my page’s status update, I can’t know how tightly he’s connected to the other fans–and the more tightly he’s connected, the more his comment impacts the Affinity Score of the status update for the other fans.

Source. http://edgerank.net/