A look back in time: "thefacebook" homepage when the site first launched in February 4, 2004

A look back in time: "thefacebook" homepage when the site first launched in February 4, 2004, only available at the time for students and alumni from Harvard University.

The facebook version of you vs the realistic version of you

Source: Comical Concept

Facebook finally launches iPad app

Facebook has finally taken the wraps off its long-awaited app for the iPad, extending its presence in mobile devices.

The app features a new layout for the site, with games, apps, groups and lists in a left-hand menu, and messages and notifications at the top of every screen.

It is available in English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.

Facebook's iPhone app is the most downloaded iPhone app to date and with mobile usage of the social network rising, its move to tablet devices has been hotly anticipated.

Source: MediaWeek

The Internet: I want my life back!

Diesel makes Facebook look like Excel with its slacker app

It’s another cool social media campaign from Diesel and while it won’t appeal to everyone it is definitely worth a look.

Diesel of lovely jeans fame has created this downloadable application for Macs and PCs that makes Facebook look like an Excel Spreadsheet. It is part of Diesel’s “stupid” campaign and its your chance to be “stupid” at work.

So you can like stuff and chat right under the nose of your boss and they will never know. It is a great little idea. They are calling it Excelbook. If Facebook is banned where you work then this really won’t help, but if not, you can download the application right here .

I love how innovative Diesel is when it comes to digital media and it is really going for this whole stupid thing. In March Diesel invited people to join the “stupid society” on fantasy island.

Not all its stupid campaign has worked. Last year its ‘Stupid’ ads were banned by ASA. Last year we also saw Diesel bring Facebook to life in its stores with Diesel Cam.




Source: The Wall

Orange Lucky Likes

Really lovely and original social engagement idea from Orange: They've launched a competition inviting users to enter a lucky dip of Facebook Likes. Users connect through Facebook and then randomly choose two anonymous like buttons. The correct choice will be rewarded with prizes, whilst the wrong choice will leave the reader with an undesirable like on their Facebook page, such as “Gillian McKeith and toenails”.

You Can Now Tag Pages in Facebook Photos

Ever had the urgent need to tag the Coke can you’re holding in that Primrose Hill picnic picture on Facebook? Well, now you can, as the social network has added the ability to tag Pages in Facebook photos.

Starting today, users will be able to tag Pages for Brands & Products as well as People (more options coming soon) in their Facebook photos.

Tagged photos will appear in the Photos tab of a Page, rather than on that Page’s Wall, and anyone can tag a Page — even if a user hasn’t “Liked” it. Page admins can also nix photos from the tab by going into Edit Page > Posting Options > and unchecking “Users can add photos.”

For those who concerned about their privacy, Facebook assures us that privacy settings will still apply; if your photos are visible to everyone, everyone will be able to see the tagged snap, and if your photos are set to “only friends,” only friends will be able to check out that pic of you standing in front of the local Rite Aid.

This move could definitely be beneficial to certain brands. Imagine if people started tagging themselves wearing, say, Levi’s jeans. All of those snaps would then go to the Levi’s Facebook Page and result in free advertising.

Will you start tagging brands and celebs in your Facebook pictures?

Source: Mashable

Facebook launches Facebook Studio for marketers

Facebook has launched a stand-alone community site where creatives can share ideas, comment on campaigns and learn what it takes to create a successful page for a brand.

Facebook Studio is a sortable gallery of marketing campaigns and it looks like it will be very useful to digital marketers and creatives.

You can search for the most liked campaigns, the most shared campaigns, by language, region and other criteria, and it’s been created because Facebook has been asked for examples and tools for social media campaigns.


You can also search by brands and by sector, and in the Learning Lab tab are detailed explanations of all the Facebook marketing tools available, so it’s easy to keep up to date (or even get up to speed if you’re a complete beginner).

And even if you’re one of those people who derides any borrowing of ideas, it can also be a good way of checking out if you’re idea truly IS a first for Facebook.

Anyone can look at it. You can also upload your own work for others to admire (agencies and clients are credited).

I know it’s an ill wind that blows no good, but are there winds that blow no bad? Facebook benefits because it gets more brands signing up for campaigns; consumers benefit by getting more entertaining campaigns (hopefully); and agencies benefit from sharing intelligence. Go and explore!

facebook-studio.com

Source: The Wall

The colours of the Top 100 web brands

In the world of brand design, choice of colour provides the potential for a wealth of carefully crafted and powerfully communicated messages about your brand.What is the most popular and dominant colour online?

Creative community blog COLOURlovers researched the brand colours of the world's top 100 sites and discovered that the web landscape is dominated by a large number of blue brands, however red does occupy a large amount of space. What’s driving this? You would expect that companies organise extensive branding research and market tests to select the colour/s that project the correct message to entice the consumer to the brand. Unfortunately many of the brands that have grown to be global web powerhouses started as small web startups, while large corporate giants with branding departments spend quite a lot on market research, branding, etc.



Lots of the sites listed above got started with brands created by the founders themselves with little to no research into the impact their color choice would have.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook was once asked why he chose blue for his site design… “I’m colour blind, it’s the only colour I can see.” …and now 500 million people around the world stare at his mostly blue website for hours each week. (COLOURlovers)

While the initial rationale for the brand colours may be trivial, the impact that these dominant brands now have in the web landscape will no doubt influence smaller companies wishing to share the positive colour associations they created. Therefore blue and red will most likely continue to dominate, but we can hope that new brands entering the market take a different perspective and decide to push the colour boundaries of their brand.

Source: Truly Deeply

Facebook in (quite astonishing) numbers, as of January 2011

- The UK has 13.5m active Facebook users, second only to the US.

- Starbucks is the 'most-liked' brand on Facebook with 6.2m fans.

- The average user becomes a fan of four pages a month.

- 1.5m local businesses have active pages on Facebook.

- 50% of active users log on to Facebook every day.

Source: Facebook

The analogue Facebook

In a promotion for French telecommunications company Bouygues Télécom, DDB Paris recently devised a way to take your Facebook profile offline...

The agency realised that while people may share their most treasured memories and photographs via Facebook, the constantly changing nature of the site means that they can quickly be forgotten, or lost amongst the amount of info stored in a profile. So Bouygues Télécom created the option of turning your Facebook profile into an actual book.





Participants could pick up to ten friends to include in their book, and also pick the timeframe covered, whether it be a birthday, wedding or other significant event. As these images of Francis Peric's book show, the styling of the books were also thoroughly in keeping with Facebook's look. The application was a huge success, with the limited edition run of 1,000 books all requested within one hour.

When Facebook becomes a book from Siavosh Zabeti on Vimeo.

Credits:
Agency: DDB Paris
Exec creative director: Alexandre Hervé
Creatives: Siavosh Zabeti, Alexander Kalchev

Source: Creative Review

The story of a man told through Facebook's interface

The Queen on Facebook: one has updated one's status

The Queen continues her foray into social networking with the launch of the British Monarchy's very own Facebook page. Below is a screengrab of the latest feed, as seen by Tim Dowling

The more you like on Facebook, the less you pay with Skoda

Skoda Belgium has certainly been doing some clever things with Facebook recently. On a microsite and a Facebook page, for each Facebook ‘Like’ received, the price of the car drops. This group buying power is an interesting way to drive fan growth and gives the fan instant gratification.

It also goes some way to answer the external problem of how much a Facebook Like button is worth. Two Euros, according to Skoda. Of course, the catch is that only one fan will get the car at the ‘Facebook Price’ but it’s a compelling and shareable idea – upon liking you are encouraged to invite more friends in the interest of driving the price down.

This is a strong and simple idea that makes great use of Facebook functionality. While previously, brands such as Burger King and iTunes have offered coupons and tickets in exchange for tweets, it’s interesting that Skoda is one of the first major brands to step up and attribute an actual monetary value to a Facebook Like.

Source: The Wall

Grey Stockholm moves their entire site to Facebook

On Tuesday this week, Grey.se underwent a transformation. Now there's simply a link to facebook.com/greystockholm there.

"We're moving to Facebook
We want to be where people already are, and 2.5 million Swedes are on Facebook, so that's why we have moved our site to Facebook."

What the?... There's no clever use of YouTube like BooneOakley.com, nor is it the very clever javascripted Modernista.com social web framing of Modernista work on the web, but it's a move. To Facebook. Why?

Grey's David Schwieler explains: "We've been planning/doing this for a while. The big advantage is that one doesn't have to update ones ordinary homepage, which is both boring and complicated."

Source: Adland

Facebook Places on the iPhone

Facebook Places is now live in the USA. It does three things essentially. Allows you to share your location, find your friends and discover new places.

It comes with all the privacy settings. Either you can opt out of it altogether, so friends can't tag you or you will be notified every time you're tagged, so you can remove individual tags manually. Businesses can claim their shops on the map.

Right now, you need an iPhone to start using the app, but soon all mobile devices will be supported. The API allows developers to plug-in to the system and create games and other applications. It's not yet live in all regions, but will be soon. Wonder which agency and brand will take advantage of this new technology first for their marketing activities.

Source: Creative Bits

Facebook Comments Getting a “Like” Button

There’s a small feature on the way that’s about to make another big change to the way people use Facebook: the ability to “Like” comments.

Much like you can currently “Like” status updates, wall posts and other items in the News Feed, Facebook has started rolling out a “Like” button for comments. The feature is not yet live for everyone.

The functionality is much the same as traditional “Likes.” In a blog post, Facebook writes that, “when you click ‘Like’ on a comment the commenter will receive a notification. Other people who can see the comment based on its privacy setting also will be able to see who has liked the comment.”

Already the web’s number one time sink, expect this feature to add a few more minutes per day to our collective use of Facebook.




Source: Mashable

Status update as a billboard: London likes Makers Mark tube ad

The Facebook 'like' button hits London billboards… a cheap trick or a clever concept?

Source: Nathan Macdonald's blog

Are you Fabio or Fabulous?

We've just designed the artwork for fashion retailer, New Look's, 'FABIO OR FABULOUS', fun new Facebook promo for the World Cup.

New Look is asking its 150,000 Facebook fans whether their allegiances lie with football or fashion, and depending on their choice they can download and wear a mask of either England football manager Fabio Capello or US Vogue Editor Anna Wintour.

Fans then upload pictures of themselves wearing their masks to New Look's Facebook page, and then the best, silliest or most fun will win prizes and gift cards weekly throughout the World Cup season.

More info on the fun here, and if you want to get going and pick allegiances yourself, you can click on the links below to print off your cutout and keep mask!

For Fabio Capello: http://bit.ly/dzyogo

For Fabulous Anna Wintour: http://bit.ly/9K3GSe

Facebook Breaks 500 Million Users

Facebook has just hit another major milestone; half a billion visitors for the month of April. These numbers come courtesy of ComScore and represent the first time Facebook's numbers have reached this high. Google, by comparison, showed 921 million visitors for the same span of time.

The search giant still has a commanding lead, but this news makes it clear that Facebook is well on their way to catching up.

Source: i4u.com