It will be interesting to see if Facebook’s video chat increases the overall rates for video chatting. Survey data indicate that currently about 13% of VOIP users are using video chat to talk to family, 9% to friends and 6% to their significant other. With 750 million users, there will surely be a boost in those numbers. However, for those of us who work from home and balk at actually getting dressed before noon, video chatting may not be the first thing on our list to do in the day.

There seems to be increasing chatter about how all the social networking we do online actually removes us more from human interaction. Will the accessibility of video chat in Facebook help bring some of that “humaness” back in to social networking?

Along with the announcement about video chat, Facebook also announced changes and new features to the current online/instant messaging features in Facebook.  Previously, you were only able to chat between yourself and a friend. Now you will be able to do Group Chat and bring in several of your friends all into one chat. Facebook has also now implemented a new chat design with a sidebar that shows the friends you message the most at the top. Personally, I always have my chat showing as unavailable since I’m not big on instant messaging online.  The sidebar appears automatically and fits within your browser window. I found it rather distracting and was glad when I was able to find the setting in the very lower right hand corner that allowed me to hide the chat sidebar.

As I mentioned before, I’ve not been a big user of Facebook’s chat features so the changes to the sidebar are not that big of a deal to me. But judging by the comments on Facebook’s blog in response to these chat changes, many people are not entirely thrilled with the change. Many prefer the ability to see which of their friends are online for chat and not have Facebook choose for them which friends to show in the chat bar.

The timing of this announcement coincides with the recently launched Google+ as Google’s new social network which already had video and group chat built in. Will user’s be more inclined to use Google+ for video and group chatting, especially since  you don’t also have to have a Skype account to do it? Or will Skype users boost Facebook’s video chatting as users choose to stay in Facebook to do their chatting?

Will you be using Facebook’s new group chat or video chat features?

Here’s the Problem

It has long been suspected and has most recently been confirmed that posts which are posted manually to a Page have higher visibility in the News Feed than those which are posted by a third party app.  Facebook gives more weight to an update that is posted manually and therefore gives it greater priority for showing up the in the news feed of fans or friends.  Having your update showing up in the News Feed is very important because the vast majority of users interact with a Page via their News Feed and data has shown that almost 90% of fans never actually return to a Page for interaction.

How often your posts show up in users’ News Feed is not just related to manually posting to your page but also has much do with Facebook’s Edgerank (which is explained more here on TechCrunch). However, it’s clear that using a third party application is certainly not going to help to increase the visibility of your Page’s updates.

One of the things I’ve been seeing more recently is a consolidation of posts by third party apps as they appear in my News Feed. As you can see from the screen shots below, when a page I follow has had an automatic post by a third party app, Facebook will give me the option to see “Other posts from that app” by clicking on a link. This means that I have to take the extra step to manually click on that link to see what other posts I’m missing that Facebook has essentially hidden for me in my News Feed.

An automatic post to a Page that is using the Networked Blogs Application

An automatic post via StumbleUpon (a social bookmarking site)

Automatic posting via the Involver Application

If you go to Pages and compare those which are posting manually to their Page versus those which are using an application to autopost, you will most likely see that those which are manually posting have greater engagement with their fans than those who are auto-posting. Getting your fans to engage and interact with your post is not only good for building your Facebook community, but it also helps with your Edgerank (see link above to TechCrunch post).

What Can You Do?

You can still you the Networked Blogs to help with visibility for your blog within Facebook as using the application means that you will be listed as part of the Networked Blogs Directory but you can also add a tab to your Page where it will post all of your blog posts as a place to archive your posts for your fans to access easily from your Page. But post links to your Wall manually with some commentary for the best chances of having it seen by your fans.

The only applications that I’ve not seen this type of consolidation or hiding in my news feed from so far is for those that are posted using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. I do know though that with posts done via Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, I don’t often seen much interaction with them.

The best practice is to post to your Page manually. The point of using Facebook Pages is to create community and a place where you can interact with people who are interested in your brand or business and so it makes the most sense that you would need to interact personally with your fans.

Have you noticed different levels of engagement when posting automatically or manually to your Facebook Page?

You can also tag the following in a post or comment:

• Your confirmed friends
• Members of a group you are posting or commenting in
• Events you are attending
• Groups to which you belong
• Applications you’ve used

When Facebook first launched the tagging feature, you would type in the “@” symbol and the first few letters of the name of the friend or the page you were tagging and Facebook would offer an autofill drop down box to choose the friend or page you might be looking for. In recent weeks, Facebook revised the tagging feature so that you no longer need to use the “@” symbol when tagging a friend (so far you still need to do it for everything else). You can just start typing in the name of a friend and Facebook will automatically show the drop down box of options. You can then select the person’s name and Facebook will auto fill the name in your update or comment. You can now also edit the name of the person in the update and still have the tag remain in the update. This means you can now tag friends in your updates without having to include their whole name (and sometimes their maiden or middle) name as a part of your update.

Why Use Facebook’s Tagging Feature?

The tagging feature can be a good way to let someone know that you are acknowledging them in your update either to give them props for something or to give them credit. Also, since Facebook is as social network, it can be a good way to bring some social into your updates. For example, if you tag a couple of friends in an update, it can be a good way to start conversation.

Tagging Facebook pages, events or groups in an update are a good way to share with your friends about Pages you like, events you are attending or groups you enjoy, especially if you are interested in helping raise the visibility of those particular Facebook items. And, don’t forget that often tagging a person, page, event, or group will mean that our update will also show on that friend’s wall, the Facebook page, the event page or the Wall of the group which further raises your visibility (this depends on how a friend’s privacy settings or a Page’s wall options are set as to whether your update will show.)

Facebook Pages can also tag people, other pages and events in their updates. The reasons for using tagging in a Facebook Page update are similar to why you would tag someone in a personal update. However, since Page is usually used for professional or business purposes, then you want to use a little extra precaution to make sure you are not using tagging in a spammy way or in a manner that might construed only as a means to promote your Page.

UPDATE: Facebook recently made a change in Pages ability to tag other pages. When using Facebook as the Page, you are no longer able to tag another Page. If you use Facebook in Profile mode (as yourself, but still as an admin for the page,) then you can tag another Facebook Page from your Page.

Good news…you can download all of your Facebook info into a zip file. Your Facebook data includes not only photos and videos but your Friends list, posts on your Wall, all of your Facebook messages and anything else you have posted on your Facebook profile.

But why would you want to?

Well, besides getting locked out of your account by Facebook or deactivating your account, there’s always the possibility that Facebook decides to just shut down completely someday (not very likely, but it could happen.) Also, for many people, who use Facebook for business and have invested many hours into developing and cultivating contacts on Facebook so this is valuable data to have backed up.  It’s also not a bad idea to just save your Facebook data as a back up to your social networking history and as part of your ownership of your Facebook data.

Having a copy of your Facebook data is also a good idea if Facebook is the only place where some of your data exists. For example, if you upload photos from your mobile phone and you lose your phone or lose access to your photos on your phone, then you can still have a copy of them in your Facebook data backup.

How to Download Your Facebook Data

In the upper right, click on Account and from the Account Menu, select “Account Settings.”

On the Account Settings tab, scroll down to “Download Your Information” and click on “Learn More.”

Facebook will ask you to authenticate who you are before you download the data along with a warning about keeping this personal data safe.

Will you or have you downloaded our Facebook data?

To get to the dashboard, click on the “Pages” tab in the left hand navigation dashboard on your Home/News Feed page. Or you can access here your Facebook Page Dashboard. If you have too many pages to fit on the screen, then click on “See More” at the bottom of the page to load the rest of the Pages you admin.

Pages are listed in descending order of the total number of fans. From this Dashboard, you can:

• View and clear notifications of new activity
• View the total number of Page Likes
• View the number of new Page Likes (hover above Total Likes)
• View the number of Actives (people who have interacted with or viewed your page or its posts)
• See when your page was last updated
• Switch to being logged in as your page

You can access all the Page Insights for a specific page by clicking on “More” under “Weekly Actives.”

What do you think? Do you like the new Page Admin Dashboard?

For now, the tagging feature is limited to pages that are in the People, Product or Brand categories. Facebook says that it hopes to expand to other categories soon.  Another caveat is that only Facebook users can tag photos with Facebook Pages. For now, Facebook Pages cannot tag other Facebook pages in photos.

How It Works

1. Click on the photo you wish to tag and then click on “Tag This Photo”.

2. Type the name of the page you wish to tag. An auto drop down box will appear for you to select the page.  You do not have to be a fan of a page in order to tag it.

3. Repeat the process for any other pages you want to tag in the photo.

4. When you’re done click “Done Tagging.”

When you tag a Facebook Page, then the photo will show on the Photos tab for that page. It will not show on the Wall. Also, the privacy settings for the photo will affect who can see it. If you have the photo set to Everyone, then anyone who clicks on the Photo tab for that Page will be able to see the photo. If you have stricter privacy settings for that photo, then only Admins will see the photo (other than you friends, of course, if you have the photo set to “Friends Only.”)

Page admins can also disable this option by going to Edit Page > Posting Options > and unchecking “Users can add photos”.

How can you see using the Facebook Page photo tagging feature?

Facebook made several changes and additions in 2010 to their privacy settings and in 2011, there have been even a few more…all under the guise that these changes would help simplify how to use Facebook’s privacy settings. In this post, I will cover some of the important Facebook privacy and account settings that you should know about.

Enabling HTTPS for Secure Connection on Facebook

If you have had your account hacked or know someone who has had their account hacked, then you may want to consider enabling HTTPS on your account to prevent this from happening. This setting is not part of the Privacy settings but can be found in “Account Settings.” In the upper right corner, click on the drop down for “Account” and select “Account Settings.” This will take you to the account settings page and you will automatically be on the “Settings” tab. Scroll down to “Account Security” and click on “Change.”

Here is what you will see:

Check the box for “Secure Browsing (https) to make sure that you are using Facebook on a secure connection whenever possible. Keep in mind this may slow down your browsing a bit but it is one way to increase your protection. While you’re here, you may want to consider checking the box below that one as well to receive an email each time a new computer or mobile device logs into your account. This setting is meant to be a way to notify you if someone has logged into your account without your permission or knowledge.

Facebook Places: Checking In

Facebook Places was introduced last year which allows users to check in at a location via their smartphone and it posts to their profile. It also posts to the Places page for that location.  You will want to consider who will be able to see when you can check in somewhere. To find this setting, go to “Privacy Settings” under “Account” in the upper right hand corner. Within Privacy Settings, click on “Customize Settings.” Scroll down until you see this:

Here you can determine what level you want to allow for who can see when you check in via Facebook Places. Within the “Custom- edit” setting you can set it so to “Only Me” or to one of your Friend lists or to specific certain people you want to hide it from.  You will also want to decide whether your profile shows up in the “People Here Now” feature after you check in somewhere. This means that when you check in somewhere, then others who also check in at that location can see you are checked in there as well or not depending on if you have this box checked (the check box is under the drop down menu in the image above.) Again, this depends on how much privacy you want for when you check in some where. For people who use Facebook Places to find out if their friends are at a location or for the purposes of meeting up with others, then they will want to check this box.

Another Facebook Places setting to consider is whether or not you want to allow friends to also check in you at Places. The main consideration to keep in mind with this setting is whether you trust all of your Facebook friends since if you leave this setting enabled, then any of your Facebook friends can check you in with them whether you are with them or not.

This setting is just a little lower than the last one under “Things Other Share.” You can click the drop down box for “Enabled” or “Disabled.”

Keeping Your Contact Info Private

Every now and then you will see a flurry of posts by your Facebook friends about how Facebook has made your phone number public or how they are giving everyone access to your email address.  One way to ensure others on Facebook can’t see your phone number is simply to not add it to your profile.  However, there are other contact settings to consider setting to private as well.

You can find this within your Privacy Settings and it will list all of the contact information you have listed within your profile. You have the option of setting these to Everyone, Friends of Friends, Only Friends, and then custom which includes “Only Me” or the option to set it to specific Friend Lists and to exclude certain people.

If you want to remove any of this information from your profile permanently, then go to your Profile page and click on the “Edit Profile” button and then click on “Contact Information” in the menu on the left.

Instant Personalization

To find this setting, you need to go to “Privacy Settings” and then at the bottom, go to “Apps and Websites” and click “Edit your settings.” At the bottom of the App and Websites Settings page is the button for the settings for Instant Personalization. Facebook’s explanation is that this setting allows you to see relevant information about your friends when you go to certain websites. But these settings are also about your friends being able to see this information about  you when you go to these sites.  When you click on “Edit Settings,” then Facebook has a pop up with video that is meant to explain to you more about Instant Personalization. You have to click the “Close” button for this window to get to the Instant Personalization settings.

Here you can see which sites will offer instant personalization and what type of information they will offer. To turn this feature off, you can uncheck the Enable box.

Info Accessible to Your Friends

The last setting I want to cover is also within Privacy Settings->Apps and Websites. This is the setting for checking what information you will allow to be shared when your friends use Apps and Websites when your friends use them. To edit this, click on the Edit Settings button next to “Info Accessible to Your Friends.”

In my opinion, it’s probably a good idea to uncheck most of these boxes as there’s no real utility to you to have your information shared by your friend’s actions.

Facebook also offers an in-depth explanation on how to control what you share by clicking here (while logged into Facebook.)

Yesterday it was announced that Mark Zuckerberg will be donating $100 million to the Newark school system. Of course, this set off buzz all over the internet about why he did it and more specifically why he chose to do it now. Some speculate that there was some sort of reason he did it on the same that the movie The Social Network premiered. Personally, I don’t see that it matters all that much in light of the fact that so many children in the educational system will benefit from his philanthropy. You read more about Zuckerberg’s gift and the timing on The Daily Beast:

• Insider: Zuckerberg Wanted to Delay $100 Million Donation

There was some good buzz generated about the news er, rumor that Facebook might be coming out with their own phone.  I’m not a big phone geek so this buzz was a bit lost on me but many folks thought this might be a game changer for Android. You can read more about it here on ZDNet.

• A Facebook phone would be Android’s ace in the hole

If you’ve been wanting to try Facebook Ads, then you might want to take a look at this post over on AllFacebook.com about some tactics to improve your overall ad performance. Plus, it looks like there’s a coupon code in there that you can use for $25 in ad credits.

• One Killer Tactic To Boost Your Facebook Ad Performance

In news you can use…. Facebook is finally making is easier on Page Admins to remove and ban spammers from their page. Previously, it was difficult to do this if you had hundreds or thousands of fans because you would have wade through them to find and ban an individual spammer.  They’ve also given Admins the ability to report spammers.  It’s explained a bit more in-depth here along with a screenshot.

• Facebook Now Lets Page Administrators Ban Fans And Spammers

And lastly, this post would be remiss if it didn’t mention the huge news of today that Facebook was DOWN. And not just sort of down. It was down for about half of the day. If you want to know more about why it was down, you can read some of the technical jargonese here: Facebook Engineering Explains “Worst Outage We’ve Had in Over Four Years”

There was also much talking and tweeting that productivity all over the world had just increased exponentially as people were not able to waste their work day cruising Facebook for friends’ updates or growing their crops on Farmville.  And in the event that you couldn’t thing of what to do with your new found free time, the folks over at ReadWriteWeb were kind enough to put together this list of ten things to do when Facebook is down.

1) The Getting Started Tab is only visible page admins

2) The Tab will disappear on it’s own once you have entered the basic information, post updates and build a fan base.

Others have noted that the tab will also disappear if you update the page, link it to your mobile device and link to your Twitter account.

The second thing to keep in mind when creating a Facebook Page is choose the title of the page carefully.  At this time, Facebook does not allow for the changing of the name of your Facebook page once you have created the page. I’ve seen and heard of some pages successfully petitioning Facebook to change the name of their page, but this has typically been for pages with either quite a bit of influence or have over 10,000 fans. If you plan to re-brand or change the name or nature of your business at some point, you might consider going with a more general broad title for the name of your page. You can include some keywords in your title to help it get found in searches, but choose carefully.

And finally, once you have 25 fans or “likers” of your Facebook page, then you can go in and set your username/URL for your page to something short and memorable. This makes it much easier to share and promote the link to your Facebook page. As with the name of your page, once you’ve set the username/URL for your page you cannot change it, so choose carefully. Once you have 25 fans, you can choose your username here: http://facebook.com/username

Those are my three important tips for new Facebook Admins. What other tips would you suggest or what questions do you have about setting up a Facebook page?

Let’s Connect! Be sure to join Magic Fan Pages on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @FacebookMagic

Facebook finally implemented a feature that Facebook page owners and Admins have been asking for since the launch of Facebook pages…which is, the ability for any Admin of a page to remove another Admin.

Prior to this, when someone created a Facebook page, then they were considered the “original” Admin for that page and the page was permanently linked to the original Admin’s profile. The original Admin could add other Admins and any other Admins could be removed, but the original Admin could not be removed. This was problematic in the cases where an employee created a business page for their employer and then left the company, the ex-employee was still tied to that Facebook page. I had heard of cases where both the employer and the employee wanted to the ability to be removed from the page.

Another instance where this caused problems, was in the case of a Virtual Assistant or someone else contracted to set up a page for someone. This meant that the client had to give the contractor access to their personal profile for the purposes of going in and setting up the page so that the client was the original Admin. As Facebook began to tighten up their security features for logging in, then it became even harder for a contractor to log in remotely to set up the page. Now, a contractor can set up a page from their own account, add the client as an Admin and then the client has the option to remove the contractor as an Admin once they are no longer working with them.

While there are mostly benefits to the addition of this feature, there is a drawback as well. It now means that you need to really trust any other people who you add as an Admin to your page more than before. Obviously, it was important to trust any Admins you added as this gave them complete access to post or make changes to your page, but now it also means that any other Admins for your page can also remove you as an Admin.

You can work hard to build a Facebook page and community for your business or brand, then you add an employee to help administer, post and monitor the page. Unfortunately, the employee becomes disgruntled and removes you and everyone else as Admins. You’ve just lost it all with the click of a button. That isn’t to say that you couldn’t appeal to Facebook to get it back, but it would probably take awhile and in the meantime, this employee could do quite a bit of damage to your reputation during this time. My suggestion for employers or anyone else who is adding an Admin to their page, also draw up a simple contract which outlines your expectations and policy for any Admins of your Facebook page.

Facebook still has their policy in place that you need to be an official representative of a business, brand or artist to set up a page so the original Admin or person who first sets up the page will need to authorized to do so.

Image via Wikipedia