Thank you for visiting our 4D blog. Here you’ll find thoughts and comments from our global colleagues about the digital world. From a campaign that inspires us to how we see the digital world changing to a new gadget we just love, you’ll find it here!

Posts Tagged ‘ facebook ’

Facebook rethinks their Beacon ad program

Facebook’s Beacon allowed people’s activity on sites such as Blockbuster or Overstock to be published into Facebook newsfeeds. So for example, if you were to purchase a lovely new desk chair, your pals would receive a notification letting them know what you’d been up to. The only problem was, the opt-outs weren’t very clear meaning a large number of people have been inadvertantly revealing christmas purchases to their loved ones. Suddenly that surprise 3 piece suite isn’t such a surprise anymore. A petition hosted on a Facebook group with in excess of 50,000 signatures later and the system has been revamped to make submission of information far more explicit.

Posted December 3, 2007 11:23 am by Alex Horner 0 Comments

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags:

Facebook rolls out its new ad system

Though we’re not quite convinced “The next 100 years are going to be different for advertisers” because of it as founder Mark Zuckerberg would have us believe, Facebook’s new ad system is very interesting indeed. First and foremost, brands are now able to create profile pages (10,000 of which were launched yesterday), similar to what we’ve been seeing on MySpace for some time now. Any interaction with this page such as becoming a ‘fan’ of the brand, uploading photos or posting discussions is then communicated to your friends via their news feeds. ‘Vicky has started a discussion on Coca Cola, click here to see what all the fuss is about’. The idea behind this is that ads will seem more like referrals from friends than a brand breathing its message down your neck. As Zuckerberg puts it: “Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend.” From what we can gather so far, creating a branded page is free but the news feed ads are auctioned based on impressions or clicks. It will also be easier to spread word of branded apps as every installation from a friend will be accompanied by similar newsfeed posts.

Posted November 7, 2007 10:30 am by Alex Horner 0 Comments

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ,,

O2 score big on Facebook

A Facebook group sponsored by O2 has attracted around 65,000 members in just 11 days. ‘The Battle for the UK’s Favourite University‘ tasks students with representing for their unis by posting messages, discussion topics, videos or photos. For any of these activities the uni they’re a member of scores a point. The uni with the most points will win a huge £50,000 party at the end of the promotion. So far there are around 8,000 photos, 220 videos, 900 discussion topics and 33,000 wall posts. Impressive indeed. Of course, we can be pretty sure the majority of people are not talking about O2 but is that really the point? O2 are tapping into student’s loyalty and getting people talking. The group is also relevant to the product they’re promoting: a SIM that gives you free calls from your favourite place (the postcode of your choice). Of course, there’s a SIM sign up form on the side of the page just in case all this activity makes members giddy with enthusiasm for the brand.

Posted October 15, 2007 4:33 pm by Alex Horner 0 Comments

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ,,

Facebook polls: tapping into the social network generation

At the beginning of the month Facebook added the ability to create polls. You ask a simple question, decide what kind of people you want to respond (based on demographic or psychographic data users put in profiles) and pay $0.25 to $1.00 depending on how fast you want reponses. You can select the number of responses ranging from 50 to 1000. Nice little way to tap into this supposedly hard to reach segment of the population and especially nice that you can target pretty specifically. Could be very useful for those last minute pitch situations when you’re desperately in need of a way to test your ideas.

Posted June 21, 2007 9:53 am by Alex Horner 0 Comments

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ,

Facebook apps or ‘why this blogger finally caved in and registered’

Last Thursday, Facebook opened up their platform to developers by allowing them to create applications that users can display on their pages. In some senses similar to traditional desktop widgets, Facebook apps differ in that they’re not reserved for your personal consumption – anyone visiting your profile can check them out. Users of MySpace have been using similar toys for some time now and inserting them via strings of code. However, the large proportion of hideous or just plain broken MySpace pages is testament to the fact that giving web novices such a deep level of access to the functioning of their profiles isn’t neccessarily a good idea.

Posted May 30, 2007 3:16 pm by Alex Horner 0 Comments

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ,