If you feel that what your life has been missing is arguing about Game of Thrones spoilers or intersectional feminism on Facebook, things are about to improve for you: Facebook has launched clickable hashtags

Not only does that mean no more laughing at people who import their tweets directly in to Facebook with hashtags that are essentially meaningless, you can now find out what millions of Americans are saying about primetime television. For example.

The way it works is that you can either click on a hashtag in a status update, or you can search for them in your search bar. Either way you’ll be taken to a feed of what other people and Pages are saying about a particular topic. Or perhaps just find out which other people on Facebook also don’t know how to spell Portia de Rossi.

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Traditional media owners are set to profit from multiscreen viewing and smartphone ownership if the right pricing models are adopted, is the rather heartening message from a KPMG study this month. In the advisory firm’s Media And Entertainment Barometer study, the decades old assumption that people have become too accustomed to free content online to start paying, is challenged. Read More »

I wrote recently about how Facebook is falling out of favour with its young-adult audience, who see it more as a necessary part of modern living rather than something they can’t get enough of. However, companies and brands aren’t going to give up that easily, and are coming up with ever more inventive ways to attempt to engage with this audience.

Point of case – the ‘Lick is the new Like’ campaign by OCB, the leading rolling paper brand in Europe. Rather than give just a thumbs-up to something you like, you can give a rather more enthusiastic ‘Lick’. The campaign is backed up by advertising that’s the right side of edgy and makes the traditional ‘Like’ seem a bit staid in comparison.

So why take this approach? Point one: by re-appropriating a tool as widely-used as the ‘Like’ button you’re immediately grabbing a huge potential audience. The ‘Like’ tool is overused, and if you’re bored of it you might want to give the ‘Lick’ a go. Point two is that licking is something associated with rolling papers, so you’ve immediately got that very strong connection, whether you’re conscious of it or not. It’s simple and smart.

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Facebook is to slash the number of different ad formats from 27 to fewer than half that, in response to feedback from advertisers.

It hopes that the changes, which are being rolled in starting in this month and throughout the summer and autumn, will make it easier for advertisers to test which creative works best, and to optimise campaigns across desktop and mobile.

Facebook has said that it aims to make it possible for marketers of all sizes to tell Facebook what their business goals are, and to respond with the right combination of products to help them achieve it.  Read More »

 I’ve had Facebook since I was eighteen years old – six whole years ago, when it was in its infancy. So ubiquitous has it become that I can hardly imagine navigating university life without it (not to mention remembering people’s birthdays).

While Facebook is still used by the majority of people I know – and it’s the most-visited website for 81% of teenagers – I’ve recently noticed a trend for people around my age to deactivate or delete their profiles, for a variety of reasons. Why this particular demographic – those of us in our mid to late twenties – who up until now have apparently embraced social media with our arms open? Perhaps we – the generation who can still remember ringing friends on house phones – have a nostalgic disdain for it. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence among family and friends is that more and more parents and older folk are jumping on board the Facebook ship as they get more tech-savvy: a strange inversion. Read More »

Facebook has admitted that its policy of dealing with hate speech is not working and has outlined how it will deal with offensive content, in response to a campaign targeting advertisers on the website.

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It has been just over a year this week since Facebook’s IPO and this infographic takes a timely look back at some of the milestones that the social network has racked up along the way.

Since its IPO, Facebook has launched a raft of innovations designed to make the site more attractive to advertisers.

It seems some of these are paying off and in the UK we’re seeing click through rates (CTRs) increasing, suggesting consumers are actively engaging with more Facebook ads. Read More »

Is Facebook preparing to match the $1bn it paid for Instagram by paying a similar figure for an Israeli mobile start-up called Waze?

If it is why would Facebook stump up so much cash for what is described as a “social” mapping app for smartphones?

The answer could be in Facebook’s future as a mobile advertising platform. Pundits believe Waze would give the social network more mobile users and thus grow its advertising revenue. Read More »

Facebook is launching video advertising in its newsfeed in July, in an effort to capture some of the growing online video and television ad markets that are worth billions of pounds globally.

Like online video ads on other sites the new Facebook newsfeed video ads will begin playing automatically, but without sound with the option of turning audio on left to the user. When audio is activated the ad will play from the beginning. Read More »

Facebook Home mobile app

Facebook is expected to report a 40% year-on-year sales lift tomorrow for the first three months of 2013, fuelled by its fast developing mobile advertising revenues.

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