The Social 7 including the latest Google Update, Facebook tips and Irish Social Media Stats

Of course the biggest news this week was that Facebook finally launched onto the markets.  My interest in this is purely user based. I’m hoping that we’re not going to see our news feeds flooded with advertising in the future.  I’m also envious that Zuckerberg is brainy enough and driven enough to achieved so much at the age of 28.  I hope he keeps the hoody flying!

I haven’t included the Facebook IPO in this weeks links but I have found some great Facebook and Pinterest tips, there’s news that General Motors don’t think Facebook ad’s work, an update from Google and a bit of fluffy fun.  Have a great weekend.

Google Update

Whenever I hear Google mentioned these days I think of Google+ before search.  Maybe that’s because of the amount of time I’ve been putting in to the network.  However Google still is the king of search and I don’t see that changing any time soon, even though Bing are fighting hard.  This week Google released an update to their search engine, the Knowledge Graph.  It’s clever and makes perfect sense.  Now when you search for a word with  many meanings Google will give you a choice of results depending on the meaning.  Confused?  Don’t be.. Read Write Web describes it much better than me.  And here’s a video from Google.

GM pull all of their Facebook ads

This week, just prior to the IPO General Motors pulled all their Facebook ad’s.  They had been spending around 10 million a year on advertising to Facebook users.   Why?  We can only guess that they felt they weren’t seeing a return on investment, however other car companies have not followed suit and are still using the platform.  This article from Social Fresh is a quick look at why they might have taken the step.

Irish social media statistics

It can be challenging to find up to date localised social media statistics.  Luke Abbot has handily compiled statistics on Irish Internet and social media use.  It makes fascinating reading, particularly the section on politics that reveals that politicians with a Facebook or Twitter presence got a bigger share of the vote.  More here.

New app to manage Facebook pages

Managing your Facebook page via your mobile can be a struggle.  What you can do is severly limited.  You can’t use Facebook as your business, you can’t share most posts, you can’t see your notifications and you can only make status updates or post updates. Posting links, questions or anything else is impossible.  Good news! This week Facebook launched a new app ‘Pages manager’, although it doesn’t address all the issues it does at least let you see your notifications and hidden posts.  I’m sure we’ll see it improve over time.  More here.

Pinterest Pinterest Pinterest

Yes it’s still a phenomenon, the conversations I find myself having about Pinterest are very similar to the conversations I had in the early days of Facebook. Some people love it, some are confused, some don’t like it at all but however people feel it’s becoming a strong conversation starter wherever I go.  This excellent post from Sian Phillips on Tweak Your Biz is a compliation of links that will help you navigate your way through the new network.

10 Facebook tips for power users

I love the term ‘power user’.  There is no doubt I’m a power Facebook user, I’m on the network all the time (mostly work related of course ;)) and love finding the little tips on tricks that make it work.  This article from Mashable went down really well with my Facebook page likers this week, it’s full of those little tips that the average Facebooker may have missed.

Icons from the past

Have you ever noticed that we use old fashioned real life items to represent stuff online.  For example we use an icon shaped like a floppy disc to represent ‘save’, an old fashioned phone handset to represent a ‘phone’ and a manilla folder to represent an online folder. There’s more here from Scott Hanselman.  They really put a smile on my face this week.

And from Spiderworking.com this week

Run Twitter contests

I found this really handy little app for managing Twitter competitions.  It’s far easier to run a competition on Twitter, there’s none of the strict guidelines involved in Facebook contests. This app just makes it easier to manage and keep track of entries.

From our Facebook community

We asked you to share your top links of the week, here’s the social media related ones I couldn’t squeeze into the main roundup:

Managing your Social Media Whilst On Holiday – From Sage Ireland

Brandfrog reveals why senior management needs to start engaging online – From John Twohig on Tweak Your Biz