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More Than Just a Redesign Going on with Facebook This Week

It’s been a pretty big week for Facebook. Not only is there a lot of talk about Facebook’s potential for becoming the top news source on the web, but the company celebrated its sixth birthday, is passing the 400 million user mark, and began rolling out some new design changes. In addition, the company is said to be rewriting its messaging feature and preparing to launch a webmail product, but first things first.

The Birthday and 400 Million Users

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed it in a blog post last night. “Today we’re celebrating our sixth birthday, and this week there will be 400 million people on Facebook. Just one year ago we served less than half as many people, and thanks to you we’ve made great progress over the last year towards making the world more open and connected.”

“Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better.” he added. “We hoped Facebook would improve people’s lives in important ways. So it’s rewarding to see that as Facebook has grown, people around the world are using the service to share information about events big and small and to stay connected to everyone they care about.”

Facebook hosted a celebration and announced some releases at the Facebook headquarters last night. This was followed by a hackathon where Facebook staff stayed up all night coding and building new ideas for products.

Do you like the direction Facebook’s gone in for the past six years? Let us know.

Design Changes

Facebook announced some new changes to the design of its homepage. Users can find their newest notifications, requests, and messages in the top menu. When a user receives a notification, they will see a red bubble appear in the left-hand corner by the search bar. When the icon is clicked, a drop-down menu appears with the most recent notifications. The Home/Profile links are in the top-right corner with the Account menu, which includes privacy settings and the log out link.

The menu on the left-hand side of the screen has been completely reworked. “The left menu has been organized to make it easier for you to communicate with and discover content from your friends. You can now access your messages and other core features all in one place, to the left of your News Feed,” says Facebook’s Jing Chen. “With the Photos dashboard you can browse recent photos of your friends, and the Events dashboard lists your upcoming events along with events your friends are attending. The Friends dashboard will help you find friends, see which of your friends have recently updated their profiles and filter your News Feed by Friend Lists you may have already created.”

Chat has also been made more prominent with a list of online friends displayed on the left. The new apps and games dashboards, which have been discussed lately, can be accessed from the menu as well. The dashboards feature personalized updates from the apps, and they have launched with new privacy settings.

The changes are still rolling out, so it’s possible that you do not have them yet, but you will soon enough.

What do you think about Facebook’s design changes? Good Move or bad? Tell us what you think.

The Webmail Product

Michael Arrington is reporting that a “source with knowledge of the product” says Facebook is launching a webmail product. If MySpace can do it, surely Facebook can too. It’s being referred to right now as “Project Titan”, although the name will likely change.

Facebook’s messages as they stand right now, lend to email notifications. When you check your email, you find that someone has sent you a message on Facebook. If Facebook gets you using its own email service, it’s cutting out the middle man, and that means…you guessed it – more time spent on Facebook.

Would you use Facebook for email if they offered a full webmail product? Tell us why or why not.

Facebook As the Web’s Top News Source?

I’ve already written on this topic this week, but basically, the more time people spend on Facebook, the more convenient they may find it to simply get their news feeds there. If Facebook enters the email game, that’s only going to get people using Facebook that much more, and even open up yet another way for them to get their news on Facebook, through email newsletters and news alerts.

Do you see people increasingly getting their news on Facebook? Share you thoughts.

Will Facebook Be the Biggest News Source on the Web?

I have a question for you. Where do you get the majority of your online news? Is it from a feed reader? Is it from Twitter? Is it from Google News? Yahoo News? Do you spend your time simply checking specific news publications? There is talk that Facebook could become the number one place online for people to get their news.

Here’s one for discussion. Facebook users can set up a news list, which will aggregate stories from different news sources who publish their stories to their Facebook pages. All a user has to do is be a fan of that page. Would this be any different than other news aggregators linking to stories? If a news source is willingly putting up a Facebook page with its stories, wouldn’t that be the exact opposite of the argument against aggregators using content? Facebook serves its own ads too. Both the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press have Facebook pages (hopefully they don’t mind me linking to them).

Sure, these publications have control over just what content actually appears on these pages. It’s a bit different than Google or another news aggregator simply crawling the content, but how different is it really? The publications also have the power to block the aggregators. Is there a double standard?

Regardless of that debate, users are increasingly flocking to Facebook to get their news (news is also one of the most popular reasons for using Twitter by the way). The reason Facebook could be the biggest news source is that it has a massive user base – way bigger than Twitter’s, and for all intents and purposes, it operates the same way when it comes to news (albeit, with room for more text in each update).

According to research from competitive intelligence agency Experian Hiwise, 3.52% of upstream visits to News and Media websites came from Facebook last week (that’s compared to 1.39% from Google News.

“Facebook was the #4 source of visits to News and Media sites last week, after Google, Yahoo! and msn. News and Media is the #11 downstream industry after Facebook, receiving 3.69% of the social networking site’s traffic,” says Experian Hitwise’s Heather Hopkins. “To offer a comparison, 6% of downstream traffic from Facebook went to Shopping and Classifieds last week and 6% to Business and Finance and 15% went to Entertainment websites (YouTube in particular).”

“Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category,” she adds. “And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch.”

Lately Facebook has been encouraging users to set up news lists. They want to be your news source. “You can even create a ‘News’ list to filter news-oriented Pages into one view on your News Feed,” noted Facebook’s Malorie Lucich on the company blog. “Simply add relevant Pages to the list, just as you would with a friends list. The next time you sign on to Facebook, you can click the ‘News’ filter to see stories from all of the news outlets of which you’ve become a fan.”

“In addition to reading news on Facebook, you can share news with your friends on external sites with Facebook Connect,” says Lurich. “Outlets like The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, USA Today and countless blogs have become more social by adding Facebook Connect to their websites and iPhone applications. You can sign in with your Facebook login to see what articles your friends are reading and comment on articles with your authentic identity.”

Facebook has a huge advantage for being the go-to place for news. Everybody is already there, and they’re spending more and more time there checking their feeds, messing with apps, sharing their own updates, etc. If their news-news (Facebook refers to highlights from friend updates as the “news feed”) is right in their feed, they’re going to see articles frequently and get their news there almost inadvertently at times. Plus, if they set up an actual news list like Facebook wants them to, it’s only a click away, and suddenly the average user gets to enjoy the same kind of functionality that users of RSS feed readers have been enjoying for years (they never quite made it to the mainstream did they?).

Do you use Facebook to get news? Can you see it becoming the most widely used platform for online news?

Acquisition Rumors (Re)surround Facebook

Facebook might soon be involved in another acquisition.  New analyses/rumors are swirling, anyway, with one person suggesting that Facebook should be bought, and another indicating that the social networking company could extend an offer to a smaller firm.

Let’s start with the idea of Facebook itself getting acquired.  Scott Moritz, a senior writer at TheStreet.com, appeared in a video this morning saying that both Google and Microsoft would be smart to acquire Facebook.  He then continued, “Yahoo really is the one, I think . . . it needs them the most.”

Moritz supported his argument by saying that both Facebook and Yahoo act as destinations and sell ads, and that Yahoo would do well to receive traffic from Facebook.

As for the possibility that Facebook will go on the prowl, Michael Arrington discovered that Mark Zuckerberg recently updated his status update with the message “Spotify is so good.”  Spotify is a music service similar to iLike, which MySpace is buying, so a move here would help Facebook keep pace.  Facebook and Spotify also happen to share an investor – Li Ka-shing.

Stay tuned, then, and we’ll be sure to report any movements on either front.

Poor Customer Service Holding Back E-Commerce Sales

Earlier this month comScore released its Q2 retail e-commerce sales estimates, which indicated that US online retail spending dropped from the same period from last year. This is only the second time that has happened.

Sure, you have to take the economy into consideration, but there are other factors that can keep people from making purchases online. A new poll from Harris Interactive found that a lack of human assistance is one of those factors, and a big one at that.

Here are some interesting findings from that poll:

- 4 in 5 online adults who have purchased items online in the last six months (77%) say they would be interested in getting help from a real person before making certain online purchases.

- However, over 4 in 5 (82%) say there have been times when they have not been able to get help from a real person.

- Over half (52%) of those who haven’t been able to get the help they needed from a real person say it’s affected their decision to not purchase the product.

Just look at the following graphs:

“No level of automation can replace the human touch. The results indicate that shoppers still want real people to help them purchase products, even in a digital setting,” said Prashant Nedungadi, CEO and founder of IMshopping, who commissioned the survey. “Many retailers have started taking steps in this direction and we believe it will be the single biggest push for the retail industry over the next several years.”

The following graph shows some of the types of items people really want human assistance with before making purchasing decisions.

Out of the people who have purchased items online in the past six months, the most commonly purchased items include clothing, books, music, health and beauty products, and travel-related items.

While it is a good idea to make the online purchase as easy on your customers as possible, from simply the design and usability standpoint, you may consider whether or not you are offering enough human assistance, and how easy that is for the customer to obtain.

Facebook eCommerce May Have to Clear Security Obstacle

Security firm Trend Micro has been researching malicious practices on Facebook, and has discovered numerous rogue apps on the social networking site this week. They’ve been alerting Facebook of them as they find them, but apparently more keep popping up as fast as they are eliminated. Have you experienced security issues on Facebook? Tell us about them.

The apps come cleverly disguised as the most effective phishing attacks do. With all of the apps circulating around Facebook, it’s got to be hard to keep track of what all are legitimate ones anyway. Perhaps even scarier is that some seemingly legitimate apps are possibly being hacked into for malicious intent anyway.

All you can do is be careful where you click, and what info you’re giving away when you do click. Trend Micro offers the following advice:

Always check the URL displayed in your browser’s address bar before entering any sensitive information. Also check the true destination of a link before clicking it, by hovering your mouse pointer over it. If it looks suspicious, don’t click it. Also, if you’re a Facebook user, now would be a good time to go and review your privacy settings and clear out any applications you no longer use.

A report this week from the Web Hacking Incidents Database (WHID) found that 19% of hacking incidents occurred on social networks in the first half of this year. They were the most heavily-targeted vertical.

Perhaps the scariest part of this entire situation is that Facebook has just started allowing developers to sell physical goods through apps. This means, we are likely going to see a lot of businesses selling goods directly on Facebook. This has the potential to be huge for eCommerce, but security concerns are already one obstacle to successful eCommerce on the web in general. The more reports of malicious happenings regarding Facebook, the more scared people will be to buy goods through the network.

Facebook looks to be going after services like PayPal and Google Checkout in time, with regards to what platform consumers choose to pay for online goods. With the number of Facebook users already so large, and growing steadily, they have a viable shot at giving these services a run for their money.

Consider how often people are already logged into Facebook. They’re even taking it with them to other sites via things like Facebook Connect, the Fan Box, etc. There’s good reason for people to want to use Facebook to complete online shopping transactions, strictly from the convenience standpoint.

Trust is another standpoint however. It is good to see that Facebook is responding so quickly to known threats, but something will have to be done to eliminate them, or at least greatly reduce them for Facebook’s payment platform to really take off.

For specific details on the malicious Facebook apps themselves, check Trend Micro’s post, which has been continuously updated as more malicious apps have surfaced. Be careful out there.

Do you think online shoppers will be willing to buy goods through Facebook? Share your thoughts.

Google Testing Breadcrumb Display in SERPs

Google appears to be testing breadcrumbs in some search results, at least in some areas. If you are unfamiliar with the term breadcrumbs, it refers to the hierarchical display commonly used in site navigation. For example: Home Page>Product Page>Product A Page.

Do you utilize breadcrumbs on your site? Comment here.

Several bloggers have noticed Google displaying these types of breadcrumbs in various places in seemingly random results to some queries. For example, Rob Hammond provides the following screen shot:

Leo Fogarty provides another, which shows the breadcrumbs displayed in a different position within the search result:

Google’s use of breadcrumbs appears to only be a test, and a limited one at that. Google has talked repeatedly about sites having good site architecture in the past. This allows Google to more easily and quickly crawl sites.

Bing acknowledges this too. Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center recently said, “You can have great content and a plethora of high quality inbound links from authority sites, but if your site’s structure is flawed or broken, then it will still not achieve the optimal page rank you desire from search engines.”

Here are some tips from both Google and Bing regarding site architecture issues. In addition, Google recently provided this related information on getting your site crawled faster.

If Google begins incorporating the breadcrumbs display as in the above tests, on a mainstream level, that will be all the more reason to clean your site architecture up, at least in the navigation area. Site architecture certainly goes beyond this, but it is a key part of usability anyway.

Have you seen breadcrumbs show up in Google results? What do you think about the idea? Share your thoughts.

Google Adds Option to Email Task List in Gmail

Today Google introduced a feature to Gmail, which allows users to email their task lists. This can be done by simply choosing the new “email task list” option found in the actions menu.

When a user clicks on this option, Gmail will open a new compose window with the contents of your current task list. It works in each task list view – My Order, Sort by Date, and Completed.

“So to email your mom to explain why you’ve been so busy and haven’t been able to return her calls, just choose ‘View completed tasks’ from the Actions menu, then ‘Email task list,’ and send away (Note: this may not be very convincing if you haven’t actually checked anything off your list recently),” says Google Software Engineer Michael Bolin.

Gmail’s tasks feature graduated from Gmail Labs earlier this summer. At that point, a print option was also added.

An Open Letter to Online Ad Networks

by Jonah Stein and Jonathan Hochman

The FTC recently announced guidelines for bloggers that requires that they disclose financial interests, freebies and paid reviews.  This decision is seen as a shot across the bow of pay per post networks and bloggers who are monetizing through affiliate programs.    The FTC has decided that compensation is the reason bloggers choose to write about a particular topic and that readers deserve to be informed about the financial relationship.    The FTC logic is simple, “As much as those bloggers who receive these gifts would like to claim this isn’t the case, freebies like free laptops, trips, or gift cards are likely to influence a writer’s opinion of a product.”

On its face, the policy is defensible.   As crusaders against Virtual Blight, we applaud the intent of this decision.  Anything that raises the barrier to online scams, fraud and abuse even a little bit is a good thing. The FTC provides guidelines for responsible bloggers and theoretically eliminates a couple of the perks for bloggers, but it does virtually nothing to protect against fraud.

Going after bloggers’ compensation to fight online fraud is reminiscent of the RIAA attacks on individual file sharers and is just as likely to succeed. The absurdity of the power and inertia of a government bureaucracy combating individual bloggers is only matched by the ludicrous assumption the government could ever move fast enough to keep up with professional scammers who jump from domain to domain, host to host and country to country with a few mouse clicks.  Prosecution could only be effective against mainstream bloggers with an established brand that are stationary targets, but these bloggers are not the right target.

Getting a proverbial free lunch in exchange for a presumably positive review may create the appearance that some bloggers are shills who lend their prestige and celebrity to their sponsors.  That perception is not unreasonable, but the same charge could be made against almost every athlete, actor, musician or American Idol runner-up who profits from our celebrity culture.

Giving items to celebrities or other tastemakers in return for public exposure is a practice older than the printing press.   If the FTC really wants to send a message about compensated endorsements and freebies, the answer is not to go after the mommy bloggers who get a free 42-pack of diapers.  If the FTC were serious, they would begin arresting every actress wearing a designer gown to the Academy Awards and then round up the studio and network executives who rake in cash for product placements in movies and television shows.

Focus On Fraud

The statistics for online fraud are both staggering and predictable.  Instead of being distracted by the sizzling, sensational charges of payola that re-appear every generation, the industry needs to focus on the billions of dollars of online fraud committed each year.  According to the Center for American Progress, Internet-related consumer complaints are among the top ten in consumer complaints in 2008 and the number one complaint in four states.  These complaints run from auction fraud and non-delivery of ecommerce items to reverse billing scams.

By any definition, the perpetrators of online fraud are not bloggers.  If a review constitutes fraud because the reviewer was provided a free product or had some undisclosed relationship with the company who produced the product, then every journalist with a 401k full of mutual funds needs to hire a good lawyer.  Indeed, if bloggers are guilty of anything it is tabloid journalism — writing low quality content with sensational headlines designed to attract visitors to their site in order to collect advertising revenue.  This may not live up to the highest journalistic standards, but the only crimes are against facts and the English language.

Criminals are the people and companies who create pyramid schemes, networks of spam blogs to sell diet products like Hoodia and Acai Berry cleanse, Google money trees and the myriad so called “free” offers that create recurring charges on your cell phone or credit card.

Criminals are the people who target kids’ sites to distribute Trojans, spyware and adware that infects our computers and tricks people into buying phony anti-virus products.  Most of us have either experienced malware nightmares ourselves or heard a friend’s sad story.  When online fraud is so prevalent, predatory and destructive, why are government resources being committed to pursue advertorial content?

Ad Networks Are the Key

The biggest thing these criminals have in common is that they perpetrate their scams by buying advertising through ad networks. These networks have achieved the scale that makes it efficient for legitimate advertisers to reach millions of consumers and that makes them an ideal vector for scams, abuse and deception.

In an unregulated auction-based advertising market place, fraudulent offers can often pay the highest bids for keywords. In FTC Going After Bloggers – Epic Fail, Aaron observes that ad networks that syndicate ads based on “maximizing yield efficiency“ are well suited to syndicate fraud. Advertisers of scams can afford to pay top dollar for ads because their profit margins are nearly 100%.

Ad networks are morally responsible as collaborators in interstate and international frauds perpetrated upon hundreds of thousands of victims each year.  Google, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft and many others are far more culpable in consumers being defrauded than any blogger or network of bloggers.

In False and Deceptive Pay-Per-Click Ads, Harvard’s Ben Edelman estimated that as much as 70% of the revenue generated by some online scams actually wind up in the hands of the search engines.   He estimated in 2006 that Google and Yahoo were making over $200,000 a month from advertisements for screensaver software which contained spyware.  As of July 15, 2009, the top paid search results on Google for “screensaver” contain “add-on features” which include spyware, change your default browser settings, ad toolbars and otherwise aim to monetize by deceiving users.  Adding insult to injury, Edelman observes that many of these adware tools monetize by sending traffic through AdSense and DoubleClick, making Google a silent partner for adware companies like WhenU and Smiley Central.

Fight the Problems that Be

Scams and fraud not only harm the consumer, they foster the perception that the internet is not a safe place, hindering the growth of online business and delaying the transfer of marketing dollars from old media.  Instead of waiting for government agencies to step in and create regulations aimed at yesterday’s scams, as an industry we need to become proactive and develop a cooperative framework for mutual self-defense, a neighborhood watch designed to keep consumers safer while helping law enforcement focus resources on the most serious trouble makers.

The war on online fraud is going to be a huge struggle and one we are unlikely to ever declare victory.  The issues are complex, but the industry could significantly reduce the problem by creating a transparent mechanism to collect user feedback about advertisers.  Search engines and ad networks are quick to endorse behavioral targeting and social recommendations to boost earning per exposure.   For some mysterious reason, they have not applied these innovations to getting user feedback about advertisers.

If the Internet is the cesspool that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google says it is, one way to start cleaning it up would be to create a public reputation system for advertisers.  This would simultaneously reward honest companies while helping consumers protect themselves against the bad guys.   eBay created public reputations for buyers and sellers many years ago.  Why are advertisers free to operate without scrutiny?

It seems straightforward to build an advertiser rating system to share relevant statistics and user feedback.  Why not provide the tenure of the advertiser, normalized click volume, the percentage of users giving feedback and a ratio of clicks to complaints along with a link to detailed reviews that could surface fraud, misleading advertising and scams?  If comparison shopping engines can do it, why can’t ad networks?

We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we see the problem and its sources. Government agencies need to ask the ad networks why they accept money for promoting fraud.  Ad networks need to grow up and behave like responsible businesses.

Affordable Web Design and Optimization Services

In today’s business, companies large and small need a website and an online presence. Whether you are a large manufacturing company, distributor, a small business run from home, or perhaps considering setting up a small business, a website will bring new clients to your business and give you the opportunity to attract new clients and new business opportunities. Our Ecommerce business website designs have you in mind.

It is important that any small business website design gives prospective clients the right impression of your company and presents your company as a professional, competent business. To do this your website must convey such an image and Identity and will only do so if it is professionally designed itself.

Selecting the right website design company is an important factor when setting up a new site and ideally it will be the start of a long relationship, so you need to feel comfortable with your website designer and ensure they will always be available when you need them.

The majority of our clients are home based small businesses. We have helped many of them set up new sites, often from the smallest pieces of information, such as letterheads for example. It’s one thing knowing you need a website, but another matter trying to find the time to decide what it should look like and what it should contain. We can take most of the strain from you in that department and help to point you in the right direction. With our integrated SEO, SEM, Landing Page Optimization and Conversions Help we can bring you to the top by creating a quality website and help achieve a high ranking for your site in Google, Yahoo and other Search Engines through personal training.

Add value to your business. Your company website may be the first point of contact with your clients, it is a natural thing to search for products and services on the internet these days and your website could bring you new business and new clients.  However, you should consider how a professional looking website will stimulate sales further than a ‘home made’ web site and present that all important first impression to prospective clients.

Cost is obviously one of the main concerns with any new venture and as a small business we appreciate this. Our small business web design packages are very affordable and we will keep you on budget. We have a range of solutions available for the small business owner, so if you would like any advice or information please feel free to contact us for small business advice under no obligation.

Interested? Then in the first instance please contact us (rwcasandra@turnkeydropshipbusiness.com) and ask for a free quote for your project, under no obligation. We also offer free after sales support and free Limited alterations after completion. Our other services include ecommerce solutions, logo design,  Blogs, Forums, search engine optimization and marketing, Data conversion solutions and Pre-built Turnkey Dropship Business’s.

Thanks, R.W. Casandra

New auction sites challenge eBay

Move over eBay. A number of new Web sites have sprung up to provide another venue for auctioning items and scoring bargains:

Overstock.com: Great for designer labels. You’ll find Prada pumps and Gucci satchels as well as auction-only merchandise.

Sam’s Club Auctions: Best for big-ticket items such as vacuums, comforters, TVs, tents and more.

Shopgoodwill.com: A great place to find collectibles such as tea cups and decorative plates. You will also find inexpensive clothing on this site. However, everything is sold “as is” and cannot be returned.

Ubid.com: This is the place to go for electronics. The site sells excess inventory from manufacturers such as Apple and Hewlett-Packard. A lot of it is refurbished, which means that warranties vary.