Facebook rolling out new messaging options for Pages

Facebook has announced they are rolling out a new set of features for Pages and their admins to be able to communicate with with followers using the platforms private messaging function. The new tools will make it easier for customers to contact a business using a private message while giving Page admins more tools to manage their responses.

For businesses or other entities with pages that use local awareness ads, they will be able to add a call-to-action button labeled “Send Message” that will appear on the ad. Users who see these ads can simply click on the button to launch a Facebook Messenger window to shoot off a private message. On the receiving end, Page admins will not only see the message, they will also see an attachment showing the ad that generated the message.

Page admins will find a new option present when viewing comments to their posts. In addition to the Like and Reply options, admins will now see a link for “Message.” Using this, an admin can reply in private to inquiries from posters. The message will include a link to the original comment in case anyone needs to refer back to the comment. Should a Page admin respond in this manner, future viewers of the comments will see a note indicating the Page responded via private message.

Along with the new indicator that visitors will see for comments responded to privately, Facebook is also planning to show a new badge on Page profiles for those businesses that are “very responsive.” This appears to be defined as Pages that respond to 90% of messages within five minutes or less. Page admins will have access to more robust data regarding response rates through their Insight panel.

On the backend, Page admins will find some other features to help them respond more quickly. Canned responses will be available and Pages can customize and save these responses. Bulk actions on messages in the Inbox will be available as well including archive, delete, flag and mark messages as read, unread and spam.

source: Facebook

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Breaking up in the time of Twitter

For nearly 10 years, we shared everything, but it never occurred to me that sharing a four-digit PIN could ruin it all.

In late May, I was up at night dealing with a heinous cough and, seeking home remedies for post-nasal drip, grabbed the closest thing with an internet connection. That thing just happened to be my boyfriend’s iPhone. But before I could go down the rabbit hole of questionable medical advice, I was thrust into a conversation between the man I loved and a cook at a restaurant we frequented. I scrolled for hours through flirtatious word bubbles and scandalous selfies and with every iMessage, my heart broke just a little bit more.

For two months, I’d been sitting idly by while the love of my life shared his love with someone else. I hated those little blue word bubbles almost as much as I hated my boyfriend and his culinary sidepiece. If it weren’t for those bulbous harbingers of despair, I’d be living in ignorant bliss. Instead, there I was, gasping for breath in my tighty whities, bawling uncontrollably, the bright light of his iPhone screen filling my living room with dread.

The internet had become my escape, my personal pause button for emotional impulses.

The next day I kicked him to the curb, in proper mid-’90s talk show fashion, but within two weeks he was back. We were forced to cohabitate, as so many estranged couples in the Bay Area are these days. With online business booming and rent rising, it’s no easy feat finding an affordable place to stay on short notice. His presence was a constant reminder of the damage done. So I threw myself into my work to shake the nagging mix of anger and sadness. As the editor of a major online publication, that meant spending even more of my life on the internet. It may be a breeding ground for negativity, but I was numb to the kind of cruelty you find in the comments section of a smartphone review. The cruelty I’d felt in the real world, however, was oppressive.

For weeks, work was all I needed. From about 8AM until 6PM every day, I was free from my heartbreak. As soon as I woke up, I’d grab my phone to check my email and for the next 10 hours, I’d be wrapped in the sweet embrace of Twitter feeds, Slack notifications, Google docs and sluggish CMSs.

Days were relatively painless; at night the hurt crept in. True to the cliche, everything reminded me of him and the future we’d lost. More often than not, I’d cry myself to sleep after throwing back half a bottle of Rosé or a handful of martinis — up, with a twist and always stirred, naturally. When I wasn’t pre-occupied with the minute-by-minute crush of online publishing, life was just too much to bear. The internet had become my escape, my personal pause button for emotional impulses.

And then it happened. Love won. And I lost.

Like it or not, the internet was decidedly on the side of feels.

On June 26th, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution ensures the right to same-sex marriage, upending archaic laws and effectively leveling the playing field for gay men and women in the hunt for eternal, state-recognized partnership. Twitter, Facebook and just about every online media outlet were abuzz with the news. As a gay man who’d spent the better part of the last decade in a committed relationship, I should have been shooting rainbow-colored hearts from every orifice. And I was thrilled… until I looked at my Twitter timeline.

A hashtag’s success is never guaranteed, but on that day, #lovewins won. Unfortunately for me, the internet decided to focus on the emotional side of the Supreme Court decision. Instead of reflecting the giant leap in human rights, herd mentality was charging ahead, heart first. Everyone and their mothers were rainbow coating their profile pics (with the help of Facebook’s opportunistic avatar editor) and my feed was flooded with sappy sentiment. According to AdWeek, Talkwalker, a social media analytics company, recorded 284,730 mentions of the #lovewins hashtag in the first hour. The less emotive, and selfishly preferable, #MarriageEquality pulled in 63,968 mentions in the same period. Like it or not, the internet was decidedly on the side of feels.

All about equal rights, but feeling kind of meh on love right now. Can we change that hashtag?

— Christopher Trout (@Mr_Trout) June 26, 2015

On just about any other day, I would have embraced the warm and fuzzy atmosphere, but I was miserable. Trending Twitter was killing me. As the outpouring of support for equal love reached fever pitch, I began to feel the crushing pain I’d avoided during many of my waking hours. With every new instance of #lovewins, I was reminded of love lost. My timeline was overflowing with support for couples who could finally see their eternal commitment validated by this great country. And I was overwhelmed with loneliness. For nine-plus years, my boyfriend and I had gone back and forth on the idea of marriage. We weren’t sure we wanted to be a part of a largely religious institution, but we were sure we wouldn’t take the plunge until our marriage counted the same as any other. Our chance had finally come and everywhere I turned, I was reminded of how that chance was squandered.

Thanks to an otherwise unthreatening hashtag, my safe space — the internet — had become a hell-scape. I could no longer rely on the sweet sense of denial online life afforded me. And I couldn’t just shut Twitter off. It is, after all, the media’s lifeline to the real world. So there I sat, choking back tears and half-heartedly campaigning for a hashtag that set love aside. But I’m not Kim Kardashian. I don’t have 34 million followers or the ability to break the internet with my bare ass alone. I am just me, and online, the power of one has nothing on the herd.

Eventually, the world would take off its rainbow-tinted glasses, and turn its gaze on another trending topic, leaving me to pick up the pieces of my broken heart in the real world.

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Internet, Facebook

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Tags: breakup, facebook, feels, gay marriage, hashtags, love, lovewins, marriage, relationships, same sex marriage, social media, social networking, twitter

Send Facebook messages directly to businesses from ads

If you want contact someone running a Facebook Page, you can head over to that profile or rely on post comments. Now, the social network allows you to send messages directly to those businesses as soon as you see an ad. Page owners can opt for an ad’s call to action to be a Send Message button that would allow you, a prospective customer, to contact them directly for more information. The feature also lets businesses and page admins respond directly (read: privately) to any comments left on a page. When they do, a note will appear in the thread letting other visitors know they’re in contact.

Pages will also get a badge in their profile based on response time. To earn a “very responsive to messages” badge, the page will have to respond to 90 percent of messages and have an average response time of under five minutes. And yes, you can toggle your personal settings so that businesses and other pages aren’t able to contact you directly if you wish. There are plenty of tools for admins too, including saving commonly-used responses to lower that reaction time. The new messaging feature is available today, so you’re sure to see it pop up in Facebook ads soon enough.

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Source:
Facebook

Tags: ads, facebook, facebookmessages, facebookpages, messages, pages, social

Facebook does live video streaming, if you’re a celebrity

After months of sitting on the sidelines while Meerkat and Periscope dominate the livestreaming space, Facebook is rolling out its own offering… well, sort of. It’s launching Facebook Live, a service that lets “public figures” (that is, celebrities with verified public pages) stream real-time video of their adventures through Facebook Mentions. You can comment on and share these feeds if you’re a mere commoner, but you can’t record them yourself. Some of the first broadcasts will come from the likes of Dwayne Johnson, Michael Bublé and Serena Williams, if you’re wondering about the intended users.

The move is a bit odd when the very allure of competing services is that anyone can set up and share a stream for any purpose — T-Mobile CEO John Legere, for example, has used Periscope for everything from documenting runs in Central Park through to earnings calls. However, it makes sense in light of Facebook’s big push toward covering events as they happen. The social network isn’t so much interested in creating the go-to livestreaming service as it is keeping you on Facebook for as long as possible. Its ultimate goal is to prevent you from drifting over to Twitter when there’s a big premiere or Q&A session, and Live’s celebrity focus may be more than enough to make that happen.

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Cellphones, Internet, Mobile, Facebook

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Via:
TechCrunch

Source:
Facebook Newsroom

Tags: celebrity, facebook, facebooklive, facebookmentions, internet, livestream, livestreaming, mobilepostcross, socialnetwork, socialnetworking

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Facebook drones and giant slides

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

Tesla’s Model S got a lot of press when Elon Musk unveiled a “Ludicrous” upgrade that goes from 0-60 in 2.8 seconds — but a new car built by a team of German students can go even faster than that. The electric vehicle can accelerate from 0-62MPH in a blistering 1.779 seconds, and it’s currently awaiting confirmation for a Guinness World Record. In other news, Facebook just unveiled a solar-powered airplane that will beam the internet to remote locations. The Aquila has the wingspan of a Boeing 737, yet it weighs less than 1,100 pounds. This week, Inhabitat reporter Marc Carter spotted Chrysler’s camouflaged new Town & Country minivan on the streets of LA — and it looks like it’s going to be a plug-in EV. Google’s Street View cars show us towns and cities throughout the world — and now they’re getting equipped with pollution sensors to monitor the air we breathe. And if you’re planning a road trip this summer, we’ve got two amazing mobile dwellings for you to check out: a stylish wood cabin on wheels and an old-school bus that’s been retrofitted into a remarkable little home.

As the 2016 presidential race heats up, candidates are beginning to announce their environmental platforms. Hillary Clinton revealed plans to boost US solar power by 700 percent, but we still think Bernie Sanders may be our best defense against climate change. In other news, a new report shows that large-scale solar is nearly as cheap as other fuels in the world’s three biggest markets, and a gadget called the SunPort allows you to power any device in your home with energy from the sun. It was also a big week for wind power as the United States’ first offshore wind farm finally broke ground off the coast of Rhode Island.

Rotterdam, Netherlands, is building the largest electric vacuum cleaner in the world — but it’s not for tidying up your living room. The 23-foot-tall Smog Free Tower will suck pollution out of the sky and turn it into jewelry. In other architecture and design news, Spatial Design wants to combat homelessness by installing hanging pod homes on the sides of existing buildings. San Francisco has a public urination problem — and the city plans to address it by coating buildings in liquid-repellent paint that bounces pee back on offenders. In London, Anish Kapoor’s twisting Orbit Tower is being transformed into the world’s longest and tallest tunnel slide. French architect Jacques Rougerie envisioned a giant self-sustaining city that looks like an enormous manta ray. And Israeli fashion student Danit Peleg debuted an amazing line of 3D-printed clothing that shows just how far the technology has come.

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Tags: climate change, Drones, eco-friendly, EV, facebook, Green, Solar, Tesla, Wind

Facebook’s Lollapalooza feed shows the festival you’re missing

If you can’t make a pilgrimage to Lollapalooza but want to get a sense of what it’s like to be there beyond the concert streams, Facebook might have what you’re looking for. It’s testing an expansion of Place Tips that lets anyone in the US see a feed of Lollapalooza’s goings-on, whether they’re photos, videos, set times or updates. Ideally, this will give you a feel for the event (and possibly a twinge of regret) without having to brave the crowds and summer heat. Facebook isn’t saying when you’ll see the feature again, but it’s promising to “explore” uses in the future. Don’t be surprised if it quickly becomes commonplace. The social network is eager to capture the as-it-happens excitement that you normally find on the likes of Snapchat or Twitter — this could keep your eyes glued to Facebook after you’re done catching up with family and friends.

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Internet, Facebook

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Source:
Wall Street Journal

Tags: concerts, facebook, internet, lollapalooza, music, placetips, socialnetwork, socialnetworking

Russia considers blocking Facebook over gay emojis

Vladimir Putin’s Russia doesn’t like Facebook and it doesn’t care for gay people, and the government is now attempting to censor both of these things in one fell swoop. Mikhail Marchenko, a Russian senator in the upper house of parliament, has called for his government to investigate whether Facebook emojis depicting two boys and two girls kissing violates the country’s 2013 ban on exposing “homosexual propaganda” to minors, Time reports. Russia’s Roskomnadzor (The Federal Service For Supervision of Communication, Information Technology and Mass Media) is investigating Marchenko’s concerns and is prepared to “take reactive measures,” the site says.

Roskomnadzor has asked the Young Guard, Putin’s main youth group, to form an “expert opinion” on the matter. In turn, Young Guard leader Denis Davydov says he will consult with professional psychologists to determine whether these emojis carry propaganda, according to Time.

There’s no word if Russia takes issue with similar emojis on Twitter or other prominent social networks. The Russian government is particularly miffed at Facebook right now, after one of Putin’s aides was censored on the website when he used an ethnic slur for Ukranians on his personal page. Meanwhile, Roskomnadzor is believed to have shut down more than 10,000 websites, threatened meme creators and censored social media pages. In 2014, it passed a restrictive blogger registration law that ultimately pushed Google and Intel out of the country. Where’s the love, Russia?

Filed under: Internet, Facebook

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Source: Time