How To Enable Facebook Timeline Right This Second

Enabling Timeline a bit early isn’t too difficult — but it’s not at all straight forward, either.
You see, Facebook is enabling Timeline early for open graph developers. You, too, can be an open graph developer — even if you’re just looking to dabble.

A few things to note:
- You probably don’t want to do this unless you’re actually a developer. Expect bugs.
- Only you will see your timeline at first (unless you decide otherwise), but it will automatically go public after a few days. My timeline was automatically hard-set to go public on September 29th.
- It seems that if you login into Facebook on another machine, Timeline gets disabled automatically on all of your machines. With that said, it seems you can get back to your timeline (but ONLY after following the steps below) by navigating to http://www.facebook.com/YOURUSERNAMEHERE?sk=timeline
- You’ll need to have a “verified” account for one of the steps, which means you need a credit card or phone number attached to the account.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Log into Facebook
2. Enable developer mode, if you haven’t already. To do this, type “developer” into the Facebook search box, click the first result (it should be an app made by Facebook with a few hundred thousand users), and add the app.

3. Jump into the developer app (if Facebook doesn’t put you there automatically, it should be in your left-hand tool bar)
4. Create a new app (don’t worry — you wont actually be submitting this for anyone else to see/use). Give your shiny new app any display name and namespace you see fit. Read through and agree to the Platform Privacy agreement. This is the step you need to be verified for.
5. Ensure you’re in your new app’s main settings screen. You should see your app’s name near the top of the page
6. Look for the “Open Graph” header, and click the “Get Started using open graph” link.
Create a test action for your app, like “read” a “book”, or “eat” a “sandwich”

7. This should drop you into an action type configuration page. Change a few of the default settings (I changed the past tense of “read” to “redd” — again, only you can see this unless you try and submit your application to the public directory), and click through all three pages of settings
8. Wait 2-3 minutes
9. Go back to your Facebook homescreen. An invite to try Timeline should be waiting at the top of the page
And you’re done! We’ve seen this work quite a few times now, so it should work without a hitch for just about anyone.

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7 Ways To Play Facebook’s New Social Feedback Loop

Facebook’s ticker, timeline, Open Graph and GraphRank create a feedback loop that drives social discovery, engagement, and targeting opportunities.
Here are seven suggestions on how to leverage these new features in marketing (by the way, in the graphic to the right, the word “flyouts” refers to pop-out window that opens when you click on an item in the ticker).

1. Get Onto the Graph

To participate in social story creation and promotion, you have to be part of the Open Graph.
These social stories show in the ticker each time a user performs an action in an application, and are then aggregated into the timeline.
When those actions form a social pattern, as identified by Facebook’s new GraphRank algorithm, they also gain more prominence in friends’ news feeds.

2. Go Beyond Pages

Marketers, especially brand marketers, have long relied on the fan page as their only real presence on Facebook.
It’s time to extend past this to create an experience that is truly social by design and conveys your brand identity.
Apps are more essential than ever to the latest Open Graph updates, as they are the centerpiece for story generation.
Without such an approach, you might find your messages are lost among all the real-time activity streaming from Open Graph apps into the ticker and news feed.

3. Focus On Experiences

By expanding beyond just the verb “like,” new opportunities open for marketers to bridge offline and online experiences.
Every offline experience and action that is inherently social can now be put online and be addressable.
Think about “driving a new car” or “sampling a new beer.”
Think about the verbs used when customers interact with your product, or owning your own verb (e.g., “Fedex a package”).
More important, however, is to integrate those actions and verbs into sharable and social experiences.

4. Analyze Your Audience

Dig deep into the patterns and trends of your customers and users.
Focus both on how they create stories and engage around your company as well as how their friends engage with those same stories.
Understanding what resonates, and what users ignore, is ultimately an essential step in managing your GraphRank.
A high GraphRank will build more relevance in friends-of-friends, and drive additional discovery via the news feed.

5. Use Sponsored Stories To Spread Brand Awareness

Stories that resonate best should be plucked out of the Ticker, in real-time, and sponsored to friends for greater impact via sponsored stories ads.
There is a wealth of new power to leverage in sponsoring “objects” you own (e.g. a baking brand can message out to anyone who has cooked lately via any app), as well as people who have “cooked,” “viewed,” or “eaten” their recipe.

6. Work GraphRank To Make Your Ads More Effective

Facebook is moving squarely into the field of intention-based advertising, by making explicit the specific types of connections users have to objects.
As such, coupling an understanding of what user stories drive engagement, with specific intentional verbs, is a powerful combination.
For instance, I can target in-market car buyers, as those who have test-driven lately.
While this intention based targeting may not have the same volume as a traditional campaign, when done correctly should yield higher engagement and pass-along rates.
Believe me, this is an area we’re digging very deep into, and we’ll have lots more to say and show here in the future!

7. Go Beyond The Click

Understand how your users behave once they are within your app, and not just how they got there initially.
At the most fundamental level, it is essential to understand the series of actions that drive engagement, and conversion.
By identifying patterns amongst your most avid users, finding their friends or others like them can be made possible by traversing the Graph.
Data that lives beyond the click is the key to unlocking value, and can be used to inform and drive more effective marketing both inside, and outside of, Facebook.
The marketing recommendations teased above take advantage of Facebook’s new social feedback loop, and are just the tip of the iceberg.
And in the words of Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, we’re most anxious about what you can do with this next generation of the Open Graph.

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Facebook Changes Again: Everything You Need To Know

As we predicted, Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at the f8 conference in San Francisco Thursday introduced some of the most profound changes seen on Facebook since its inception. So many changes, in fact, that it can be hard to keep track. So here’s a handy-dandy guide.
1. You’re going to get a Timeline — a scrapbook of your life. In a complete overhaul of its ever-evolving profile page, Facebook is introducing Timeline. This is a stream of information about you — the photos you’ve posted, all your status updates, the apps you’ve used, even the places you’ve visited on a world map — that scrolls all the way back to your birth. It encourages you to post more stuff about your past, such as baby pictures, using Facebook as a scrapbook.
The further back in Timeline you go, the more Facebook will compress the information so that you’re only seeing the most interesting parts of your history. You can customize this by clicking on a star next to a status, say, or enlarging a picture.
Timeline is in beta now, and will be opt-in to start. In the long run, it will become the new default profile page.
2. You don’t have to just Like something — now you can [verb] any [noun]. Remember when all you could do to something on Facebook — a video, a comment, a product, a person — was Like it? Pretty soon that’s going to seem laughably antiquated. The social network has launched Facebook Gestures, which means that Facebook’s partners and developers can turn any verb into a button.
So you’ll start seeing the option to tell the world you’re Reading a particular book, for example, or Watching a given movie, or Listening to a certain tune. In turn, as many observers have pointed out, this is likely to lead to an explosion of oversharing — and far more information on your friends’ activities showing up in your news feed than you probably cared to know.
3. Facebook apps need only ask permission once to share stories on your behalf. Although not as big a deal as the Timeline, this tweak may be one of the more controversial. Previously, apps had to ask every time they shared information about you in your profile. Now, the first time you authorize the app, it will tell you what it’s going to share about you. If you’re cool with that, the app never has to ask you again.
But you don’t have to worry about this app stuff clogging your news feed, because …
4. All “lightweight” information is going to the Ticker. Status updates, photos from a wedding or a vacation, changes in relationship status: these are the kinds of things you want to see from your friends when you look at your news feed. Who killed whom in Mafia Wars? Who planted what in FarmVille? Not so much. So that kind of trivial detail has been banished to the Ticker, a real-time list of things your friends are posting now that scrolls down the side of your screen.
5. You can watch TV and movies, listen to music, and read news with your friends — all within Facebook. Starting today, thanks to a whole bunch of partnerships, there are a lot more things you can do without ever having to leave Facebook. You can watch a show on Hulu, listen to a song on Spotify, or check out a story on Yahoo News , via the Washington Post‘s Social Read app). The ticker will tell you what your friends are watching, listening to or reading, allowing you to share the experience with them by clicking on a link.
The upshot: a brand-new kind of media-based peer pressure. On stage, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings — a launch partner — revealed that he had only just decided to watch Breaking Bad because Facebook’s Ticker told him a colleague was watching it. Netflix’s own algorithm had been recommending the show to him for years, but that was never reason enough for Hastings.
6. Facebook has more users and more engagement than ever. We got two interesting nuggets of information out of Zuckerberg (and the Zuckerberg-impersonating Andy Samberg): Facebook has hit 800 million users, and most of them are active. The social network just saw a new record for the most visitors in one day: an eye-popping 500 million.
Indeed, the whole impression left by the event was that of a confident, fast-evolving company that is becoming ever more professional, and Zuckerberg’s stage show bore more than a little resemblance to an Apple keynote. It’s going to be interesting to see what Google+ can do to keep up.

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How to Delete Applications on Facebook

Want to get rid of a Facebook application? This guide will show you how to do it.

Once you have logged in to Facebook, click on the Account button at the top right of the page and then select the option that says “Privacy Settings.”

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7 Things You Should Never Share On Facebook

While there are plenty of things that we all enjoy seeing on Facebook, there are also a ton of things that nobody likes to see. If you post any of the things below, you should consider changing your Facebook habits!

Your Phone Number

Do you have any ex-girlfriends or boyfriends that you don’t want getting in touch with you? A great way to help them reconnect is by publishing your new phone number. The best way to let people know about your new phone number is to text them!

Pictures Of Feet

Oh, did you really just get a pedicure? That’s great news but does everybody really need to see your feet? Unless you are a foot model (congrats if you are!), you really should refrain from posting pictures of your feet.

Uninteresting Baby Photos

So we all know that you are having a baby and it’s great news. However, if you document your entire child’s life on Facebook you’ve gone overboard. There’s a reason they call them home videos: Leave them at home for your private collection. We all love entertaining baby videos like this one, but do we really need to see every update? Everybody loves a cute baby, but documenting every moment like the applesauce they just ate, really is unnecessary.

It’s Complicated

When you’re in high school it’s funny to say that you are in a relationship with someone else, but if you are sharing with the world that you have hit a rough patch, you aren’t doing yourself any favors. Seriously, hold off on posting that things aren’t easy for you right now. While your friends may post their sympathies in follow on comments, they really actually have pity for you. If you need support, call your friends, don’t post about it on Facebook for everybody to see!

Checking In To Common Locations

If you’re snorkeling in the great barrier reef, I’d recommend checking in on Facebook. However if you are picking up a Snickers bar at 7-11, there’s really no benefit to posting about it. The best things to share on Facebook are those things that are exciting and interesting, but driving through the McDonald’s drive thru is really not something your friends want to know about.

Something For Sale

There’s a reason Craigslist exists: to sell things. While you may have a used bike to sell, the odds that one of your friends wants to buy it right now is much less than someone buying it on Craigslist or another site. Seriously, if you have something to sell, go somewhere that the buyers are actually shopping!

Poorly Taken Photos

Your pet may be cute, and honestly, that’s something I enjoy seeing, but if you mess up the shot, it hurts your image. The plane you are taking off in may be exciting, but seeing the flash in the window reflection is painful for the trained eye! Frame the shot, make sure the flash is properly set, and shoot. If the photo doesn’t turn out well, take the photo again and share that to Facebook instead!

Source:Alfacebook.com

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How do I increase my fan count On Facebook

These days three burning questions seem to be on every page admin’s mind:

1. How do I increase my fan count?
2. How do I quickly add more punch to my Facebook page?
3. How can I become more effective at social media marketing without breaking my budget?

Clearly the hardest part about using Facebook to grow your brand is knowing where to begin. Sure, there are a ton of resources out there attempting (some even proclaiming) to help you get more impact out of your efforts, but they’re more than likely blowing smoke, unproven, or taking something relatively simple (building a custom Facebook page) and spinning it into something exceedingly complex.
Say hello to a page admin’s new best friend: Facebook app provider North Social. With an affordable buffet of 18 easy-to-install apps, North Social enables you to quickly activate fan-only promotions, showcase and sell products, distribute viral content, capture visitor contact info, and much more.

So, if you’re about to print out a lengthy PowerPoint for your boss or client detailing how you’re going to accelerate the growth of their Facebook page, do yourself a favor; abort mission.
Save a tree (and some face) by visiting North Social; you’ll find smart ideas on how to get more out of Facebook by browsing 150+ usage examples across 20+ industry categories.
Although North Social apps have consistently proven to enhance the performance of Facebook pages, they are approved for use by Facebook, have not caused Page Admin health problems, or ever had to face a Congressional panel.

 Source:alfacebook.com

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