Jamie sent this link around to the tech team yesterday, but having installed them all last night and babbled on excitedly about them to my wife (she was shaking her head in agreement but I think she was more interested in Jamie Oliver's Swedish adventure) I thought it'd be worth sharing them with everyone.
First of all, if you don't already use Google Chrome as your browser, you really should. It is by far the best browser out there (and if you use IE you should repent and fall to your knees and ask for forgiveness to the Elders of the Internet).
Some of these may be too geeky for general use but the SEO Site Tools for example will give you amazing insight into any site with great detail and even recommendation on what you should do to improve your page ranking. The colour picker and screenshot tools are really useful as well and if like me you have always wished for a handy Lorem Ipsum generator then your wishes have just come true.
This new Facebook 'Like' featurehas big implications - not least for how small businesses will promote themselves in future.
It’s a bit like those old school ‘Find us in Yellow Pages’ stickers that every YP advertiser used to display. But this brilliant wheeze takes it much further....by encouraging happy customers to ‘like’ a business on their Facebook page.
This immediately opens up amazing low cost marketing possibilities for small and local businesses e.g. word of mouth endorsements, targeted offers, loyalty rewards or highly targeted prospect advertising e.g. just to friends of those who ‘like’ you.
Looks like you can 'Like' via text as well as online.
From a ‘D love E’ perspective, Facebook are also pushing this is a great way to boost Facebook page traffic - “Display prominently on your window or sales counter, since businesses that promote their Page off-Facebook tend to see a 20% or greater increase in connections.”
Up until now there have been four key 'buyable products' on Facebook:
1 - advertise
2 - use a share button
3 - build pages in Facebook and
4 - build connected sites.
There is a good summary and case studies of how these from Facebook here.
Facebook are implementing changes to their platform to make it a more effective advertising and marketing platform and announced the key features at F8 this month. One of the main features is the introduction of 'social plug-ins'; find out more here in a summary by Facebook.
At the centre of these Social Tools is the introduction of a ‘like’ button that allows for more flexibility of Facebook integration on and off platform.
Nicolas found a great link to dramatise how the like button works here (make sure you login).
You can see how it is being used by Levis to personalise a shopping experience on YouTube here.
Or watch the video below.
Finally, there’s a useful article here on the key changes from a Facebook user perspective from Pocket Lint here.
Will there be a consumer backlash against invasion of privacy? Well I don't think so because, actually I'm kind of much more interested in what people I know and trust think, rather than what a bunch of random think when they rate an item.
Roll on the personalisation of the web I say. Anything to make it easier to use...
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