Is Facebook Incorporating Hashtags? #Rumors

Facebook already has tagging for people, Pages, and location, and could soon allow users to tag their posts with hashtags so they could be more easily indexed and surfaced by Graph Search. According to reports from The Wall Street Journal. Facebook is experimenting with using the ever popular Twitter feature.

Facebook currently allows you to tag a topic or person who has a Facebook account or page, but you cannot simply see what all Facebook users are saying about a specific topic.

Hashtags are unique and often cryptic terms preceded by a hash mark #, they’re specially tracked  on Twitter as they would presumably be on Facebook. Twitter shows which tags are trending, and clicking on a hashtag brings up other posts with the same tag.

By implementing hashtags, anyone who wanted their posts surfaced by Graph Search could add a hashtag to their post, and Facebook could help searchers find the tag related to what they’re looking for. When clicked from a post in news feed, the hashtag would presumably open a page of Graph Search results of mentions of the hashtag, not unlike Twitter.

The feature has been mimicked by many other platforms, including Google+ and Facebook’s own Instagram. As a result, many Facebook users include hashtags in their Facebook posts out of habit even though hashtags don’t work there.

It may prove beneficial for advertisers who could hypothetically “promote” user posts that contain particular hashtags just as they now promote “likes” of their business pages. Such promoted posts could get more prominent and longer-lasting placement on Facebook’s News Feed, where non-promoted items are sorted by relevance.

Hashtags would also allow brands and events to better coordinate buzz on Facebook. They could ask people to include the hashtag when referring to a brand’s event or social media marketing campaign. Facebook could then display in the news feed any hashtags mentioned by multiple people in your network. Advertisers might be happy to pay to appear in search results for hashtags related to their businesses as many do on Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that sponsored search results would be a natural way to monetize Graph Search.

“It is unclear how far along Facebook’s work on the hashtag is and the feature isn’t likely to be introduced imminently,” the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. When reached by ABC News, a Facebook spokesperson said, “We do not comment on rumor or speculation.”

WeShareMedia accepts all changes we see going on across all the major platforms. We realize that lots of people might not react the same way when something that’s such an integral part of daily routine changes. How do you feel about the upcoming #Facebook changes?

Youtube Stars Becoming Spokespeople for Brands & Companies

Becoming a hit on YouTube on purpose is no easy task. The popular video platform is loaded with viral videos of people doing silly or embarrassing things. YouTube is the top platform that’s discovered a lot of young artists who have ended up as the most popular music icons in the industry.

The Canadian YouTube sensation Justin Bieber was discovered on the site by Scooter Braun who later became his manager. He was even able to consult his own personal idol Usher all the way to Atlanta. It did not take long before Bieber signed up with Usher and eventually, with L.A. Reid and the Island Def Jam. Since then, he’s become a worldwide sensation.

Since 2007, YouTube has partnered with producers on the video site to share ad revenue, allowing people to create YouTube content for a living. “We pay out millions of dollars to partners each year,” said Baljeet Singh, group product manager at YouTube. “Thousands of channels are generating six figures a year.”

Take someone like DeStorm for example; a multi-talented one-man band who runs the channel DeStorm with more than half a million subscribers. Offering a mix of rap, R&B, talk show and art. All stuck together with some great editing, DeStorm is part of a first generation of “YouTubers” who managed to monetize their videos.

DeStorm came to New York by way of Baltimore to be an intern and ghost writer for established record labels. He spent most of his time helping write songs while producing instrumentals, writing jingles, and trying to hustle his own music. After limited success, he saw YouTube as a way to set himself apart.

Let’s take a look at another rising Youtube star named Carly-Ann Giene. Giene Entertainment’s YouTube channel has over 50, 000 views with more to come when a highly anticipated sketch, “Model Behavior” debuts this month. (March 2013)

“Model Behavior” is a satirical look at high fashion photo shoots and what the industry regards as beautiful or a means to sell products. It explores the horrifying, dysfunctional elements of modeling — while making you laugh. This sketch will be released this month on the Giene Entertainment YouTube Channel. Also make sure to watch Carly-Ann Giene in her other performances in “Mugluvin” and “Carly the Clown Eliminator“. Her sketches on YouTube are both original and highly relatable. Giene is undoubtedly an extraordinary actress and a rising talent.

Back in June 2012, YouTube vice president of product management, Shishir Mehrotra announced Video Creation Marketplace, a platform that will connect content creators on YouTube with marketers or agencies looking for viral buzz.

The marketplace platform will allow partners to set up profiles indicating what they do, their past successes and the demographics or types of brands they are best suited for. Advertisers or agencies will be able to search by parameters, such as content type, target demo and keywords, to find the right YouTube star for their campaign.

Seeing what great strides and all the amazing careers that have been launched with the power of social media. A well maintained internet presence with wonderful content across all platforms will only enhance the possibility to be found, for those exploring these options. The WeShareMedia team of experts is likely to have come across them by now, or maybe you have yet to upload these gems?

Facebook Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes its News Feed

Facebook today is rolling out a rad new redesign of its News Feed. This redesign is the biggest since it launched back in 2006. The new news feed represents the first major overhaul of Facebook’s core service since the launch of the Facebook Timeline at the end of 2011.

The giant social network plans to unveil the redesign at a press conference at its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters. “The news feed is one of the most important things we’ve built,” Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the press event. Likening news feed to “the most personalized newspaper,” Zuckerberg added that “the stories around you deserve to be displayed with more than just text.”

The redesign will reportedly give users new ways to catch up with what friends are doing, such as sorting through photos they share or music they are listening to. Right now users can only sort the News Feed by “Top Stories” or “Most Recent.” The changes address a frequent complaint from users that they have too little control over what appears in their News Feed.

The new news feed features three major components:

• Bigger Images
• Multiple Feeds
• Mobile Consistency

Users can subscribe to different types of feeds, including feeds from all friends, close friends, music, photos, games and those who a user “follows.” For those who hate how Facebook sorts news feed content, a chronological view is now available.

Facebook claims that the average user spends 22 minutes on the site each day. One of the primary goals of the new look is to entice people to stick around longer.

Currently, the News Feed is crowded with friends, businesses and celebrities you “like” all competing for your attention. It’s visual progress, that’s for sure—Facebook has done great work sweeping away a lot of what developers call “chrome” (buttons, scroll bars, navigational detritus). What’s left is the stuff you ostensibly care about. And that stuff looks swell, making the web version of Facebook match the mobile version almost perfectly.

Facebook is splitting up the feed into subcategories—Music, Photos, Games, Friends—so that you’re not suffocated with information. Or at least suffocated at a slower, more comfortable rate.

There will be a section of the new News Feed dedicated to pages that users have liked. It’s fair to assume that the users who have liked your Facebook page are at least peripherally interested in your products and services.

Photo albums will also be bigger with more thumbnails giving you an easier view of what your friends actually did, and where. It began rolling out yesterday…………..slowly, like everything Facebook debuts. Keep refreshing, engaging & sharing. Make sure to start taking photos worth seeing in larger formats 😉

Social Media Tip of The Day – Getting Your Instagram Profile More Exposure

After having released a desktop version of the popular photo editing & sharing app Instagram, there’s new things to take into consideration. Previously, the Instagram website only let users edit their account information. But all that changed with the recent introduction of web profiles.

The new profiles act as extensions of the Instagram mobile app, with users now being able to comment, follow, like and view other photos from a desktop. Brands, marketers and regular users can use these web profiles to encourage engagement and interaction outside of the mobile app.

Community managers will want to use the new web profiles in conjunction with the Instagram mobile app to further enhance a profiles web presence.

While many features from the mobile app haven’t yet made their way to the web, Instagram web profiles do offer a decent amount of nice features, such as:

• A cover collage at the top of your profile that features a rotating selection of your Instagram photos.
• Follow and Unfollow buttons.
• Your profile biography.
• A website URL of your choosing.
• Your account’s number of photos, as well as follower and following counts.
• An infinite-scroll timeline of your photos, separated by month.
• A section where you can manage applications that have been given permission to access your Instagram account.
• Badges, which you can use to link to and promote your web profile.

The Instagram web profiles do come with some draw backs, they are lacking in certain areas when compared to the mobile app.

• There’s no search. Searching for hashtags and specific users isn’t available. Although usernames are links that allow you to hop from profile to profile.

• Twitter-like hashtags are the best way to get your Instagram photos seen on the mobile app, but their use is disabled with web profiles. You’ll still see them in photo descriptions and comments, but they aren’t links.

• You can’t see follower lists. Even though web profiles display follower and following counts, users are unable to see exactly which users these are.

• Photo maps aren’t available. Many Instagram users geo-tag their photos using the mobile app, but you won’t find these maps anywhere on the web. Although geo-tag information is shown within photos.

• There’s no Popular page. If you like seeing the photos on Instagram that are drawing the most attention, you’ll have to return to the mobile app.

With over 100 million users on Instagram, if your branded or personal account is one of them, then you’ll want to maximize and utilize your account’s new web profile the right away.

Start off by installing an Instagram badge on your main website. Instagram recently rolled out badges for users to promote web profiles. From the full site, pick the badge you’d like, then simply copy the automatically generated code and paste it on your website or blog. The badge will link back to your account’s web profile.

Verify your privacy settings. According to Instagram, if you have a private profile, your photos will only be visible to logged-in followers you’ve approved. This also means that only those followers can comment and like your photos on the web. It should also be mentioned that search engines are not allowed to index Instagram photos—whether your account is private or not.

Make sure you’ve added your main sites link on your profile. Not only does adding a link increase visibility for your website, it also provides SEO value, even though it’s a no-follow link, it still sends a signal to search engines.

Lastly and most importantly, recognize the increased importance of those image links.  Images from Instagram used to appear within tweets until Instagram recently removed support for Twitter cards. (Sad Panda Bear) This means that Twitter users will be clicking these Instagram image links, and lead them directly to the Instagram web profiles.

Besides Twitter, other people will find their way to the web profiles using these image links when Instagram images are shared to Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Tumblr and even through email.

Is your business, brand or personal Instagram page as optimized as it should be? Wouldn’t it bring further peace of mind to know that experts will be in charge of your internet presence? WeShareMedia is here, just for you.

Social Media Tip of The Day – Sending Voice Messages Through the Facebook App

Just recently, the Facebook app for iOS was given the ability to record voice and within the mobile app, as well as Messenger’s voice messaging support and an improved Nearby tab.

Voice messages originally showed up in the iOS and Android versions of Facebook’s Messenger apps, and later VoIP calling was added to those apps in the US and Canada. The voice messaging capabilities have come directly to the main Facebook apps for iOS as well. Sending a message in the app now gives you the ability to record a voice message  to send directly to the recipient, and also gives access to the camera to allow for still shots or video clips to be recorded and sent.

The process is fairly simple and for those of us who are always looking for ways to save money, this could be another neat little trick. Facebook is known for rolling out updates very quietly; So quietly in fact that most people don’t notice the changes or how to make use of them. It is a bit ironic that the worlds largest social media platform has a problem communicating. LOL.

How Do You Send a Voice Message?  Here it is in step by step instructions 🙂

1. Go to a conversation and tap + next to the box where you write a message
2. Tap Record Voice
3. Touch and hold the red record button and start speaking
4. Release the record button and your message will send immediately

*To cancel your recording, slide your finger away from the record button before releasing.

Send that special someone a quick a reminder of how much they mean. WeShareMedia encourages everyone to take full advantage of these wonderful new media perks.

How Does Facebook Affect Your Mood?

Facebook has been around for almost a decade now—first at Harvard University and now used by over a billion people around the world—studies have been conducted on how it affects our mental and emotional states. The results? Ultimately it’s your call, but there are significant pros and cons to this social media platform.

Given the amount of time people spend on Facebook, it’s bound to have an impact. A new study shows you’re not the only one Facebook’s taking on an emotional roller coaster. The survey says the site causes the most stress but also elicits the most positive effect on mood compared to other social networks.

Study participants were more likely to be positively influenced by social media, with 45.9% of people listing Facebook as the site with favorable effects on their mood. YouTube ranked at 17.5%, followed by LinkedIn.

The study revealed that those with more updates on their status each day actually experienced positive mood swings that a control group did not experience. Those who posted more frequently felt less lonely and more connected to friends. The reason why? Sitting behind a computer screen may seem lonely, but updating your status keeps friends on the brain when you can’t see them in person.

It also appears that one in every three Facebook users experience feelings of jealousy and envy after spending time on the site. The study showed that substantial emotional damage was experienced by users who were looking at positive posts of friends who were “smiling and appearing happy.” In many ways, Facebook has become a place for people to flaunt their successes.

Because interactions take place on a screen, where users can’t read body language or non-verbal communication, and can feel depressed even though they’re congratulating someone on a happy vacation.

Do you find yourself feeling any different when you don’t log onto Facebook? It’s become a part of our daily rituals, and fulfills our natural human desire to socialize. We learn from our peers and engage with whomever we please. How big of a factor does it play in your life?