7 things Facebook needs to fix for Businesses

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Jul 5, 2010 in social media | 1 comment

There is no doubt about the fact that Facebook is a pretty good Community engagement platform. By introducing pages, Facebook has let businesses converse with their audience on a platform they are already at. However Facebook’s offering is far from perfect and the whole experience leaves a lot to be desired. Here we talk about 5 annoyances Facebook needs to fix in order to make it that much more useful.

1. Allow Pages to post to other Pages, Profiles, Groups

Right now, individuals may post to individuals, pages and groups, but pages can only post on the page itself. If a page admin wants to promote itself on other pages, he has to do it from his personal profile. By allowing pages to post on other pages, Facebook allows admins to cross promote linked pages. Issues of spam can be solved with a simple delete/report/mark as spam button as exists on Groups currently.

2. Allow Admins to comment as Individuals as well as Pages

Many a time there are comments and posts on a page that need not warrant a response by the page, but a reply or a like from an individual is nice. Or maybe a discussion veers into an area where page involvement may not always be appropriate but an individual may indulge in it. Allow admins to choose whether they want to do an action as  a page or an individual instead of restricting them to only ‘Page’ as it is setup right now.

3. Notifications on Interactions by Email

Yes it is the job of a community manager to thoroughly monitor the Facebook fan page, but email notifications will make life simpler for page admins. Allow users to subscribe to email updates for a particular discussion, comment or photo so they can stay updated on certain time-critical topics.

4. Allow Page Creator to be different from Page Owner

More often than not, it’s your intern or agency who creates the Facebook page for you. While it is necessary they have administrator access to your page, what happens when your intern leaves on a not-so-pleasant note, or you switch agencies and they aren’t too happy about it. Setting up the page by allowing the real  owner to indisputable rights lets you separate the two. An absolute god mode if you may. In fact, different access rights to admins may actually be a good thing.

5. Fans be allowed to contact Admin

Groups show who the creators and administrators of the page are. For fanpages, there is no such feature. So unless a contact form tab is specifically created, users have no way to contact the page admins. This can be fixed if Facebook itself were to provide a simple form with a ‘Contact page admin’ link under the profile picture.

6. Share Access to Ads

While Facebook may be an engagement driven platform, Ads are an important component of Facebook Marketing. The problem lies in the fact that only the ad creator gets access to it, and all modifications need to be routed through that user. Even wanting to check performance requires an export of the report by the creator and then send it via email. Again, setting up an access level system for users would solve this problem.

7. Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration

This problem is specific to pages with multiple admins. Right now admins work individually with no real way to trace back what action was taken by which admin. The problem is minimized if the admins are physically close and/or communicate well, but a log of actions in the admin section would increase accountability and collaboration. Moreover a view of the page by any admin may display “Admin: Username” to display what action/comment is attributed to an admin would allow them to keep tabs on each others actions minimizing the need for manual action logging by users.

These are some of the annoyances I’ve faced when working with clients on Fan pages. Have you had any similar experiences?

I discuss Online Privacy and what it means for Businesses & Users

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Jun 28, 2010 in Published, social media | 0 comments

“What is left of privacy has become the user’s responsibility to control what they put up online, since anything you put up online can become public – one way or another; the phrase ‘Online Privacy’ is now nothing more than an oxymoron.

Suddenly marketers are sitting on unprecedented levels of data, opening up a new world of opportunities limited only by their definition of it.”

Read the entire article on Emirates Business 24/7

What is your Foursquare Door policy?

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Jun 21, 2010 in Geo Networking | 0 comments

A lot has been said about privacy on the internet – both in terms of what we put and who share it with. With the omnipresent nature of Facebook, the social network has evolved far beyond the tool it used to be to connect with existing friends. Facebook, similar to Twitter, is being used to form new relationship and make new connections.

Foursquare and other Location based networks, on the other hand are meant to be for your existing friends only, especially given the sensitive nature of the information they are built around. And that is what Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare would want you to believe as well. He has said before that Facebook is a place where people may become friends but on Foursquare people connect with people who “they truly wouldn’t mind running into during a night out”

A glance through my Social Graph paints a picture where users (including me) connect with people they may be acquainted with – over Facebook, Twitter and other networks – but may not necessarily have met each other, let alone be friends.

This leaves me wondering, what is your door policy on Foursquare? Do you accept every request that comes your way? Or only the ones you interacted with on a different social network? Or do you strictly maintain it to real life connections?

Online privacy is dead and it is a good thing

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Jun 14, 2010 in social media | 0 comments

Privacy and protection of online users  (and the content posted by them) has been the subject of great debate recently. The latest iteration of the Facebook Platform – a framework to create applications – has given developers and websites access to user data which they use to personalize content  for arriving users. The social network has received a tremendous amount of flak for this endeavor ranging from mild criticisms to elaborate campaigns to quit Facebook (Quit Facebook Day campaign on May 31^st). Facebook for its part has had a fairly solid privacy framework underpinning the network granting users granular control over what content can be seen by which of their friends. After the backlash, Facebook (recently) introduced considerably simpler controls to the previously complicated system. Is that enough though?

Facebook wants Hyper-Like to be the new hyperlink, and other ways the social network is taking over the web.

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Apr 26, 2010 in social media | 4 comments

I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said last night was the night the web -

as we know it – started its change into something drastically. f8, Facebook’s developer conference was held in San Francisco last night and Zuckerburg said what he had for us was the most ‘transformative’ thing they had ever done for the web. And the way they plan to do that is by empowering their developers. Although it was done in a better manner than the oh-so-elegant Steve Ballmer where he portrayed his ‘enthusiasm‘ for developers at a Microsoft Developer conference a couple of years ago.

The announcements made by Facebook had an underlying theme of ‘connections between people and things they care about’.