Timeline for Facebook Pages - What You Need to Know

As of yesterday, Facebook finally introduced Timeline for Pages, giving everyone until 30th March to make a graceful transition.
If you've switched your personal profile to Timeline you probably guessed this was inevitable.
So what are we looking at exactly? What's out and what's coming into play? Here's the lowdown on Timeline for Facebook Pages.

1. Bye Bye Landing Page: In my opinion, a huge blow is that landing pages have essentially lost their meaning as non-fans now see the Timeline directly. A landing page was a fabulous way for companies to display their creativity and ingenuity (who didn't love Red Bull's *hint hint* call to action?) The page tabs still appear in the row of apps (in default icons, remember to change them) listed below the cover photo, but the landing page is no longer the default.. well, landing page.
   
   

   

   Red Bull's awesome now defunct
   Facebook landing page

   
   
2. Cover Photo: A tremendous consolation for the loss of the landing page is the cover photo. Like the profile picture and image strip could be optimized, Facebook has very kindly saved page owners the trouble of designing multiple images in tune with their brand by having a single, gigantic, in-your-face image, with a width of 810 pixels. Use this real estate to convey what your brand all about. Click here to read about certain rules as to how the cover photo should be used.
   
   
   

   

                            LV effectively communicates the essence of its brand                    
   

3. Highlight baybeh: The Highlight feature is pure genius. By clicking the 'star' icon in the corner of your post you ensure it's eye catching and unmissable, with Facebook automatically doubling the width of the post.
   
   
4. Pinning: In tune with Highlight is the 'Pin' feature, with which you can ensure an important post gets maximum visibility and stays right on top of the page. Only one post can be pinned at a time.  It's a great option to lay stress on promotions, sales, announcements, what have you.
   
   
5. Timeline itself: The essence of Timeline is to literally put out the timeline of your company, to list the historic events in its lifetime from inception to present-day. Best to get started on this.
   Check out Manchester United's history, with photos dating all the way back to 1878.
   
   
6. Private message: Admins need to be more vigilant than ever as fans can now send a private message to the page. Messages appear in the Admin panel along with other elements available to admins, such as Insights, Notifications and New Likes, all in one spot. The layout for admins is a lot more organized and easy to get around.
   
   
7. Longer About: The About section has shifted directly under the profile picture, allowing more text to be visible as opposed to the limited 250 visible characters the old design had.
   

A couple of other great pages with Timeline:

Burberry - having put into play all the above mentioned.
Herbal Essences
Coldplay

There's really nothing you can do if you dislike Timeline as so many Facebook users still do. In a field as dynamic as social media where change occurs so fast, it's best to be proactive and make the transition yourself (when given the choice anyway) rather than have it forced down your throat. With 840 million users, Facebook is obviously staying put and if you want your page to do the same, you should embrace the change as enthusiastically as a ravenous predator does its meal.

Good luck!

To learn more about Timeline for Facebook Pages, click here.

enough.

When 26/11 happened, people were outraged at the government. Ten gunmen held the city hostage for three days, murdering hundreds of innocents in cold blood and it took the security forces that long to get to them. But the perpetrators were not from India; the cause for the horrific attack on Indian soil was external.

So what do we do when the threat is from within?
To take a specific case in Mumbai - when two men protecting their women friends are stabbed mercilessly by 13 thugs?

How do our politicians react to that?

By promising the killers' family justice, that's how.

Here's the gist of what happened from aamjanta.com; it's almost like a movie. If you know how it plays out, skip ahead:


The Murder of Keenan Santos
On 23rd October 2011, a group of cricket fans came together to enjoy a match on a big screen, have dinner at Amboli kitchen and Bar, eat paan and have fun. What followed didn't quite work out that way. 

Dinner done, as they were at the paan shop, a drunk man stumbled against one of the girls. Thinking that this is your average garden variety drunk, one of the men in the group, Avinash Solanki, slapped him. Got into a verbal spat, another friend, Reuben Fernandes, hit him too. However, this was no garden variety drunk lecher (which are kind of common on streets). This man had two murder cases pending against him, and he was a barber and roaming around scot free.

He was accompanied by a few other men. Angry and wanting revenge, he swore he’d be back, and the group dismissed him. Shaken over what happened, but not expecting trouble, they continued to stand there. Meanwhile, said man returned with a group of people in three rickshaws – thirteen, many said – and his original companions. They were armed with swords and knives. Keenan and Reuben tried to reason with them while the others got the girls out of the way to safety. Keenan Santos was stabbed viciously, and his intestines spilled out. As Bejnamin tried to get the girls into the restaurant, some of the thugs followed them. Reuben Fernandes got in their way and was viciously stabbed too. As onlookers watched in shock, Avinash Solakni hurled a nearby ladder at them and pulled Keenan and Reuben into the restaurant. The thugs did not follow them into the restaurant, and left.

Read the rest here.

Keenan Santos died the same day. Reuben Fernandes succumbed to his injuries yesterday. May their souls rest in peace.

None of the bystanders did anything to help, let alone offer the friends a lift to the nearest hospital. I have never witnessed something like this and when watching something similar in a Hindi movie I always found it abnormal the way passersby huddled around in a circle, incapable of being of any use whatsoever. And I always thought - 'as if'. It's heartbreaking to learn that people really are like that. Have we become so insensitive to the needs of our fellow human beings? Pause for a minute and think, if you were there, would you charge in to help? Would you atleast call the cops? Or would you hold back, not wanting to get involved?

I am disgusted by some of the comments the articles covering the altercation and deaths of the two men has received. 'They shouldn't have been there', 'they should have left', 'they were showing off in front of the girls', 'they should have let go of their ego'. WHAT? Is that all you can think of? They were there and they were brave. They stood up for what's right. And they faced the consequences. Someone very rightly said, 'no good deed goes unpunished.' Then again, the world would be a worse place to live in if nobody cared to perform that good deed.

Those goons should not be allowed to get away with what they did. But of course, it looks like they're going to. Why else would a man with two (now three four) criminal cases against him be so cocksure when he says he'll be out of prison soon? How much political backing does he have?

Political parties have been playing both sides, sympathizing with the victims but visiting the killers' families assuring them 'justice' (whatever that means, their dictionary must hold a different meaning of the word) as the area the latter live in is a huge vote-bank.

How long are we going to allow our 'leaders' to manipulate us for votes? When will we unite as a people and say, 'Enough!' and mean it when we do? 

This hasn't received the media attention it should have. That can be changed, with social media. Organize a tweet-up. Get the word out on Facebook. Get celebrities involved via Twitter. Social media has empowered each and everyone of us and we can no longer get away with just waving our hands in despair and saying 'this country has gone to the dogs'.

Will you be a bystander? The choice lies with you.


Join the group on Facebook.

always on facebook.

A brilliant ad from Oglivy India for Vodafone Essar, depicting the website we all love to hate.

                                           

The ad cleverly enacts the past fad on our favourite social networking site - Farmville, Superpoke and Mafia Wars, not forgetting the tendency of people uploading their baby pictures, or of parents sending friend requests (my advice: keep them pending).

Are you one of those people that have an obsessive compulsion to check your notifications (or your farm) first thing in the morning? Always on Facebook, day and night?

There should be a rehabilitation center for Facebook addicts. In retrospect, it's a pretty serious disease. My sister had a friend in school that would check his Facbook on Macbooks when he was visiting the Apple store o_O It's become the norm to enter a store (for me, Ikea, Raymond's) or hotel (all the way up in the Czech Republic) and catch the person behind the desk on the dreaded site if employers didn't have the hindsight to block it.

Before privacy settings changed the first time around, user profiles were open to everyone, bringing out the stalker in us all. Don't deny it. You know you checked out pictures of people you had no idea existed, atleast once!

I must admit, I was an addict too. I still am, although the drug has changed.

On Twitter, I am a recluse. I enjoy my anonymity immensely. It's a relief not having every single person you ever met on earth on it since you were a toddler, instead to follow people you wish you could meet (Shashi Tharoor for one. Michael Owen for another. I don't follow League football but the bloke sure can tweet!). No bombardments of ridiculous games like 'It Girl' (??) and Pillow Fight!

Do you remember what Facebook first looked like? It had all your apps on your profile page.
Following the recent changes on Facebook, quite a few of us have been very vocal about our dislike of the drastically altered News Feed. I'm definitely not a fan of the Ticker, but it's a boon for business pages: fans interact on a page and their friends are updated of the activity on that page immediately, playing on the friends levels of boredom, piquing'their curiosity to pull them in too.

A survey held by Mashable a week after the F8 conference recorded people that were unhappy with the changes at a whopping 74%.

Users say Facebook me no likey

Not that Facebook cares.

But no matter how much we gripe about it, on Facebook we stay. After all, like the guy in the ad says, where else would we be? Soon, we'll have embraced the Ticker and wonder why Zuckerberg didn't come up with it earlier.
Though honestly I find that hard to believe. I pay no heed to it now - my mind has put a permanent strip of tape on that part of the screen, like Youtube sensation Julian Smith suggests here:

If he reshot and updated this video, I bet he'd feature another 25 things.

What do you think?

(Recovered from within the spiraling depths of my drafts)

a flashback, a social media success story and a craving for doughnuts.

I was never too fond of doughnuts. A little doughnut franchise in Bombay changed that.

Mad Over Donuts. (M.O.D.)

Their doughnuts (I can't bring myself to spell it as donuts) redefine delicious. They are unbelievably and irresistibly scrumptious. My cousins introduced me to M.O.D. during my stay in Bombay at my aunt's place. We'd go to the Juhu branch at midnight (funnily enough I've never been there earlier) with my Khalu (mom's sister's husband) and spend about twenty minutes debating on the flavours and delectable appearance of the batch displayed and finally select two each. In a couple of minutes there would be no trace left of them except for the melted chocolate smeared around our (my) mouths and this too would miraculously vanish as our tongues were stretched out to the limit to get every speck of frosting that had escaped, back into those salivary glands.

The bff and I, about to dig in.
My flavour? 'Color Me Bad' - sprinkles on melted hazelnut chocolate. Deeelish.

Then, heaving huge contented sighs, we'd select another dozen or so doughnuts for the rest of the family at home. The family at home receive their wares joyfully, and hurriedly call dibs on their favourite flavours and put the box in the fridge for the next day (as it is now past 2 am). Unfortunately they never get to sink their teeth into the ones of their choice (or at all) as by morning, there are just a couple of doughnuts left from the dozen, the rest having been devoured up in the dead of night. The perpetrators are blameless of course. It is not their fault. You cannot leave a boxful of the world's most heavenly goodies unguarded and expect it to remain untouched, lying in wait for you.

If I'm not wrong, this is the first and only Indian brand of doughnuts. And oh boy, their lil hole 'n ones are the best in the whole friggin' world.

What makes them the best?

1) Great service and fresh stock even at 1 am (which is when they close for the day).

2) Home delivery till midnight.

3) They have awesome promotions - buy 2 for Rs. 99 and get a cappuccino free, buy 9 get 3 free.. We'd never leave with less than a dozen.

4) THE VARIETY.
5) No one makes doughnuts like them. NO ONE. Not Dunkin', not Krispy Kreme.. Do you dig? NO ONE! Formidable competition to say the least.

Besides that?

The marketing is bloody brilliant.
Never having lived in Bombay, I can only comment on the internet marketing. Being a marketing graduate, I am in awe. The website kicks traditional out on the street. M.O.D. has positioned itself as fun and extremely lovable and that's the secret behind its mass appeal (the vision statement will tell you all you need to know). From cute graphics to an extensive and intelligent play on words (employees are called M.O.D. Partners-in-Crumbs), the offbeat site is pretty darn neat.

I haven't even started on their Facebook page. It has GOT to be my favourite company fanpage. Judging from the escalating fanbase, it's a significant contributor to building their brand equity.
What's so special about it? The entire page brims with creativity. It's fun. It's interactive. There are promotions and contests specifically targeted towards Facebook fans, pictures just for the page (this one being my personal favourite), endearing status messages that encourage fans to partake and express their ardent love for doughnuts while M.O.D reciprocates the love.

Their recent status message inspired me to blog about them.
"We like the 'likes' of you!"

That dear readers, is how a brand should use social media.

Now, I languish for a Color Me Bad.
M.O.D. needs to expand to the Gulf. Starting with Kuwait.


Picture courtesy: Logo 'borrowed' from M.O.D.'s Facebook page. I'm sure they won't mind :)