Has anyone been strong enough to keep up their new years resolutions? In the office, we’re still doing pretty well and with the arrival of our new fridge – we’ve even been able to fit more healthy food into it, without fighting for space, it’s been a very exciting week for us at Fusing Creativity! 
It seems that over the past week a lot of brands have been implementing new marketing strategies, new developments and new features. There’s a lot happening out there and we’re beginning to see even bigger movements towards increasing marketing spend, it seems businesses decided to cut marketing budgets last year and have now seen the error of their ways! Clever and well executed marketing can really keep you ahead of your competition…
Anyway, enough of the sales patter, in this weeks TTU – it’s an all online or social! Including – a ridiculous amount of Facebook updates; Google on the heels and a Youtube bringing a great new feature to video…
Facebook improves it’s location insights for pages
I’m yet to see this work, but Facebook have updated their insights on your business Facebook page to reflect any changes in location, so for example, if a user likes your page and they live in London, then they move to Milton Keynes, previously the ‘Like’ would still be attributed to London, now however, Facebook insights will reflect any profile changes in location – pretty good for those businesses who depend on location data. Read more here…
Sponsored stories are now appearing in News feeds on Facebook
We’ve seen these new ‘sponsored stories’ appearing in the sidebar of our Facebook newsfeed, but Facebook will now integrate them into our newsfeed soon. It’s a bold step we think – especially as during the interview recently on BBC TV, Facebook couldn’t really answer the question between advertising and sponsored stories. Read more here… or come and let us know your thoughts about this on our Facebook page…
Facebook brings the comments box to mobile
Facebook has launched the Comments Box plugin for mobile, which aims to help media sites interact with readers across the web and mobile devices. If this is something you use on your site already, it should automatically update to mobile. Read more here…
Facebook accounts for 2.7 percent of online advertising spending
Ad-buying agency Efficient Frontier examined data from over 15 advertisers and 20 million fans from a load of different industries within the retail, entertainment and consumer markets (and more) to discover that Facebook has accounted for 2.7% of total online advertising spending during the last quarter of 2011. They also predict that number to reach 5 % by the end of 2012. Read more here… (you’ll have to download the doc)
Facebook adds new ‘Listen in’ feature
As we announced on our Facebook page last week, Facebook have launched a new “Listen With” feature that allows you to tune in to what your friends are listening to on the Spotify app on Facebook. I actually find it really annoying to see everyone’s track list announced to me on Facebook – although it is quite funny when you see your rock out friend is listening to Chesney Hawkes “The one and only”. Find out more…
Google Socialises it’s search with G+
Google is pretty quickly implementing Google+ into its core products such as Gmail and Youtube. Well this week it announced a pretty big one – adding it their search engine. It’s trying to demonstrate that it not only understands content, but now understands people and relationships. Pretty clever. The update is called “Search plus Your World” introduces three new features Personal results, profiles in search and people and pages. Sounds exciting, we’re yet to see it in action. Read more here…
Screen sharing now in Google+ Hangouts
After it’s big social search launch, Google then turned it’s attention to Hangouts – the video feature within Google+. Now allowing you to share your screen. Read more here…
Google to launch maps ‘game’
Called ‘Your world’ Google have announced a maps game that allows you to play with a location. A little like marble madness on your iPhone. It’s going to be launched in February and as yet we’re not sure of he value for business but it will be interesting to see how it’s received! Read more here…
Youtube add storyboard feature to videos
YouTube has introduced a new version of its video player, which will enable users to hover a mouse on any point of the video’s timeline and view thumbnail images of specific frames. The storyboard feature could be helpful during tutorials – it would allow a user to skip to the part in which he or she is experiencing an issue – or perhaps your marketing team would like to skip to the part of the video in which your brand’s product or service is mentioned. Read more here…
