With news feed updates poised to surge as users enable new open graph actions, Facebook has begun grouping together activities within the same application.

Read the rest of this entry »

You might say that you don’t care whether your friend Sally checked into the bar tonight, or that your friend John commented on a photo of you, or that your friend Mark posted a super clever comment about your status update, but these seemingly worthless interactions are important for our social relationships according to a new report from the National IT User Center at Uppsala University.
Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook’s Page updates feature, which let Page administrators send out messages to a Page’s fans, used to have laughable response rates. One test to a page with hundreds of thousands of fans previously resulted in less than 10 clicks. In other words: users simply were not responding to page updates. We’ve performed our own test and while our findings don’t show dramatic response rates, a 1.1 percent response rate in under 12 hours is a significant improvement over previous tests.
Read the rest of this entry »

Something about public proclamations tends to make them more official. Wedding vows, for instance, seem to seal the deal to all who are present. And Facebook relationship status updates kind of have the same effect. I guess that’s why it’s such a big deal that Prince Harry’s now ex-girlfriend Chelsea seemingly made their most recent break up official by changing her status on Facebook to no longer being in a relationship.

Most of us have been there before, either one of the participants of an ended relationship or a friend that merely witnesses the proclamation on our Facebook newsfeed. Not to mention, public proclamations on Facebook seem to be the trendy thing for celebrities to do these days. But why is Facebook, of all things, such a powerful factor in Harry and Chelsea’s breakup?
Read the rest of this entry »