The film, which arrives in theaters October 1, is an account of the early days of Facebook, chronicling its foundation and rise to prominence. While the other teasers for the film have centered around the larger idea of Facebook and what it represents, this spot is all about the central figure of the film — Facebook’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
While the story is largely about events that precede the current debates over privacy and site ownership, Columbia Pictures hasn’t been afraid to weave the film itself into the overall discussion surrounding the service and what implications it has on how we communicate.
Ironically, of course, the movie about Facebook actually cannot be advertised on Facebook (not directly anyway), because using elements of Facebook’s branding in third-party advertisements is against its terms of service. However, that hasn’t stopped the studio from using Twitter to promote the film.
Oh, and as ScreenRant notes, this latest spot for the film includes Kanye West’s latest single, “Power.” I wonder if Zuckerberg & co. knew that when Mr. West visited Facebook HQ earlier this week.
What do you think of the latest spot for this film? Will you see The Social Network in theaters? Let us know!
In an e-mail to Mashable, Facebook says that the company is “working to fix the issue” and that it only affects users who have the new publisher enabled (like most major new features at Facebook, the rollout of Questions and the new publisher is a gradual one).
We’ve noticed several other issues since the launch -– notably, our Facebook Page has been failing to display recent updates. There are also a number of usability improvements and features we’d like to see added to Questions, which we described in a blog post yesterday.
Are you having issues with Facebook since the rollout? Let us know in the comments.
Amazon and Facebook are doing some technological partnering to bring you a new layer in product recommendations.
Now Amazon users will be able to link their Facebook account to their Amazon account. At the outset, this will allow Amazon to show you recommendations based on your Facebook interests and activity.
This integration will also help you figure out what kinds of gifts your friends might like by letting you better search for your Facebook friends’ Amazon Wish Lists and by pulling in information from your friends’ profiles. Of course, it will remind you of Facebook friends’ birthdays, too. It will show you interests you have in common with your friends, and it will show you which items are popular with all the people in your social graph.
When it comes to protecting your purchase information and privacy, Amazon says it will not share your Amazon account information with Facebook. It won’t reveal what items you’re buying, and it won’t contact your Facebook friends. And if you don’t share information publicly on Facebook, Amazon won’t be able to grab that information and broadcast it to others; this includes scraping your friends’ profiles for non-public information.
Since we tech writers are more on the exhibitionist side of online privacy concerns, we decided to test drive this feature and report back to you.
What we saw was both fascinating and useful.
Amazon and Facebook: Our Test Drive
To get started, I logged in to my Amazon account. On the right side of my account’s home screen, I saw a Facebook integration “beta” ad, which I clicked to turn the recommendations on.
As expected, Amazon’s knowledge of my social graph was in line with my friends’ stated privacy settings. For example, I wasn’t able to see gift recommendations for Steven Walling, my former coworker, or my friend David Armano, because their profile and interests aren’t too public on Facebook. But my friend and Kissmetrics CEO Hiten Shah’s interests were available to Amazon, and I was able to get some great gift ideas from them:
I also got to see what the rest of my Facebook friends thought was cool (Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon was the most-liked record from my social graph), and I got some cool recommendations based on music, movies and books I “liked” on Facebook or talked about in my profile.
You can change your Facebook/Amazon settings or disable the integration at any time.
For some people, we can see how one website’s knowledge of your activity on another site — and, because of Facebook’s reach, across the entire web — might come across as slightly creepy. However, when you boil it all down to ones and zeroes, it’s a great way for commercial entities to take advantage of this huge silo of information that Facebook has about you, your personality, your friends and much more. And because it helps you, the user, discover and interact more with the things you like, it’s one of those rare win-win scenarios wherein the consumer gets as much benefit as the corporation.
That’s our experience so far, at least. If you feel up to it, give the Amazon/Facebook integration a try, and let us know what you think about it in the comments.
In just a few minutes the 2011 Ford Explorer will be unveiled to the world. The reveal is coming six months prior to the car appearing on lots nationwide, and taking a much different form than any of the car reveals that came before it.
That’s because, for the first time ever, Ford is bucking with tradition and turning to the web — with Facebook as the platform — to exhibit its latest vehicle.
Ford has been using the Ford Explorer Facebook Page to drum up excitement in anticipation of the all-day event. The automaker has already far surpassed its goal of 30,000 fans prior to the reveal, which means the the company will be giving away an Explorer to one random fan. Now, all that remains is a web-wide media blitz, the likes of which is designed to make a big enough splash to reach more than 50 million people.
We spoke with Scott Kelly and Scott Monty, the digital marketing minds behind the campaign, for the full story.
An Auto Show Like No Other
According to Kelly and Monty, the 2011 Ford Explorer has been 100% reinvented. As such, the team felt the reveal process needed to be completely redesigned to match the car’s enhanced form and style.
The automaker took the lessons it learned around the Ford Fiesta movement and decided to make the launch an online play with Facebook as the primary platform. They also decided to make interactive online media buys to drive people to the Ford Explorer Page in order to supplement the social media side of the campaign.
Ford’s Facebook-heavy scheme marks the first time a major car company will forgo an auto show for a new car reveal. Instead, Ford will bring the auto show to Facebook, where everyone can simultaneously experience the unveiling. In fact, Ford has a series of videos and events planned throughout the day to not only replicate the auto show experience, but will also introduce consumers to executives and allow for conversations around the new vehicle to occur.
At 12:01 a.m. ET Ford put up the “Reveal” tab on its Facebook Page with a pre-reveal video featuring celebrity spokesperson Mike Row and CEO Alan Mulally. At 7:40 a.m. ET, Ford will release a video that finally displays the 2011 Explorer in auto-show-style on Facebook. The rest of day will include a detailed tour of the new car, a gallery of photos, more Mike Rowe, a live wall Q&A with Mulally and Facebook chats with featured Ford employees.
The Paid and Earned Media Blitz
While Facebook will serve as the core of the web campaign, the digital marketing team has made a number of strategic ad buys to drive people to the Facebook Page and get them engaged in the day’s activities.
“We will reach more than 50 million people on Monday on sites like AOL, Yahoo, Washington Post, Facebook and hundreds of other websites,” Kelly said.
The advertisements in question are anything but ordinary. Ford has used Facebook’s Open Graph to implement “Like” buttons into the ads themselves. This means that should Ford succeed in garnering “likes” from ad viewers, the company will essentially gain a Facebook Fan for life. Ad viewers can also click to learn more about the new car on Facebook or FordVehicles.com, where Facebook has been heavily integrated into the site design.
If Ford can reach Facebook users and web denizens with its creative, the company hopes to keep them engaged with the day’s activities as described above. It’s a one-two punch of paid and earned media that the company believes will help make the 2011 Facebook Explorer a part of online and offline conversations.
“We want to be blanketed with coverage of the new Ford Explorer. We don’t want anyone to miss the reveal,” said Kelly when describing Ford’s ultimate goal around the campaign.
Success Through Social Media?
Both Kelly and Monty seem very confident in the company’s alternative auto show strategy. The two point to Ford’s continued social media savvy, even suggesting that Ford’s second-quarter net income of $2.6 billion is proof that the company is on the right track.
In some ways, Ford’s Facebook strategy is risky. For one, it’s never been done before. There’s also potential for this to be a big flop, especially given that we’re still six months out from when consumers can actually purchase the hyped-up vehicle. To that end, Kelly and Monty hope for the six-month lead time to spawn online conversations that will propel interest in the new vehicle and translate in to sales.
Ahoy, social sailors! Hop aboard for another round of Internet catch up, courtesy of the good ship Mashable.
The resource buffet is open 24/7 for your perusing pleasure. This week, we have a look at how far social media’s come over the last five years, a slew of juicy factoids about Facebook and Microsoft, some sweet iPad games we dare you not to drool over, and some great biz lessons from the most successful tech startups of our day.
Heading further out into open web waters? Don’t forget that this resource mondo-guide bubbles up every weekend — a real life preserver, if we do say so ourselves.
Top 10 Funniest Old Spice Guy Responses [VIDEOS] We’ve collected 10 of the most hilarious Old Spice Guy video responses right here to celebrate one of the most impressive social media campaigns of all time.
A Look Back at the Last 5 Years in Social Media The social sites we use and the way we use them have shifted dramatically over time. Here’s a quick look back at the last five years in social media.
Inside Street Food’s Social Media Revolution [VIDEO] A new wave of street vendors, equipped with mobile kitchens and mobile broadband, are luring crowds to them via social media. We caught up with a few to chat about their strategies.
HOW TO: Deal with a Cyberstalker Depending on the enthusiasm level in the fevered fingers of your unwanted BFF, cyberstalking can also be, how can we say it … hella off-putting.
10 Fascinating Facebook Facts Everyone knows the basic Facebook facts about the service’s Harvard origins, so we’ve delved a little deeper to find out some more interesting tidbits.
10 Fun Microsoft Facts You Might Not Know With such a vast presence, much has already been written about Microsoft. For those itching to know even more, we’ve dug up 10 great Microsoft facts.
10 Cool Cable Management Solutions [PICS] If you’ve got more than a few wires crossed under your desk, then we’ve found 10 great solutions to help you manage your cables in style.
11 Ways to Speed Up WordPress Don’t wait until your blog is so popular that it can’t handle large amounts of traffic. These 11 tips will help you speed up WordPress so you won’t be caught with a crashed site.
Why QR Codes Are Poised to Hit the Mainstream Stickybits and SCVNGR are startups that integrate barcode scanning in intelligent and fun ways, and they’re poised to propel the trend into mainstream hands. Here’s why.
HOW TO: Develop iPhone Apps With Staying Power If you’re trying to create a long-term relationship with your audience, your app has to keep giving. Here are some tips on how to increase your iPhone app’s shelf-life.
10 Terrific New Tumblr Themes Tumblr theming has really been taken up a notch in recent months. Here are 10 of our favorite themes that you can install on your own Tumblr blog.
Top 5 Mobile Commerce Trends for 2010 Mobile commerce has hit the big time in recent years, and is poised for further growth. Here are five mobile commerce trends to keep an eye on for the remainder of 2010.
10 Tools for Getting Web Design Feedback Apple is known just as much for its veil of secrecy and Internet rumor buzz as it is for the actual products. Here are a few things you may not have known about the company.
10 iPad Games Worth Paying For We went hands-on with a number of popular paid iPad games to cull this list of worthwhile App Store buys.
For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.
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HOW TO: Score a Design Job Getting a design job can be a daunting experience. To help, we got some great tips from three seasoned designers that have had success.
11 Essential Online Resources for Consultants One of the keys to being a successful consultant is information at your fingertips the moment you need it. Here are 11 online resources that cater to you.
10 Tips for Corporate Blogging There is a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to improving corporate blogs, but here we’ve narrowed it down to 10 tips that companies should work on.
There are still millions of web pages, blog posts and videos without “Like” buttons, though. What if you want to share one of those pages with your friends on Facebook? There’s an extension for that.
Facebook Like is a Greasemonkey extension that places a “Like” bar on the top of any webpage you visit (except for Facebook.com). It was built by Facebook Engineer Matt Kelly as a personal project during a company Hackathon.
“If you come across a site without the Like button, you can still use social plugins to share articles with your friends by installing the Facebook Like Greasemonkey script,” Facebook told us earlier today. “Built as a personal project by a Facebook engineer at one of Facebook’s company Hackathons, the script makes it possible to have Like, Recommendations and Activity Feed features on any Firefox page you visit.”
Not only does the script allow you to “Like” any website, but it also includes the social plugin’s Recommendations and Activity Feed features. An important note: while the script was built by a Facebook engineer, it is not officially affiliated with the company.
Facebook Like works with Firefox as long as you have the Greasemonkey add-on installed. It also works with Google Chrome, since includes native support for Greasemonkey scripts, while Safari requires GreaseKit.
What do you think of the Facebook Like bar? Will you be installing the script? Let us know in the comments.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told ABC’s Diane Sawyer this week that Facebook would “definitely think about” adding a Dislike button to the site, allowing users to express distaste for updates or pages on Facebook.
A Facebook group for the concept has nearly 3.2 million fans, while there are at least two unofficial “dislike button” extensions for the Firefox browser.
But Zuckerberg is just humoring us: Facebook will never add a Dislike button, regardless of users’ demands.
Facebook reached its 500 million member milestone yesterday and celebrated the event with the launch of Facebook Stories. The monumental moment also played a role in the ABC World News report featuring a candid interview between Diane Sawyer and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
To commemorate the achievement, the team at Facebakers.com put together the comprehensive infographic included below (click to enlarge). The illustration breaks down the demographics of Facebook’s burgeoning population (according to their own data on the service), and explores the international makeup of the site.
In an interview that will air tonight on ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked frankly about an upcoming IPO, the Facebook movie, a shady lawsuit and much more.
As far as the movie The Social Network is concerned, Zuckerberg seemed to echo Facebook co-founder Dustin Moscovitz’s opinion that the film seems a lot more exciting than the real-life version of Facebook’s history.
“I just think people have a lot of fiction…. The real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time,” Zuckerberg said in his interview with Sawyer. “I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? …We just sat at our computers for six years and coded.”
Somewhere in that six years of coding, however, it is alleged that Zuckerberg signed a contract that would give ownership of his website to a web designer and former associate at Harvard, one Paul Ceglia.
Although a Facebook lawyer said yesterday the company is “unsure” whether such a contract was ever signed, Zuckerberg told Sawyer unequivocally, “We did not sign a contract that says that [Ceglia has] any right to ownership over Facebook.”
As far as an initial public offering of stock is concerned, Facebook’s IPO is one of the most hotly anticipated by many in the tech world. The company is currently valued at upwards of $20 billion and is expected to generate around $1 billion in revenue in 2010. Zuckerberg told Sawyer that, while he and the rest of the Facebook team are still rather single-mindedly focused on product, “At some point along the path, I think it’ll make sense to have an IPO. But we’re not running the company to do that. We’re running the company to serve more people.”
Of course, Sawyer’s interview also touches on the privacy debacle (“We have made mistakes, for sure,” said Zuckerberg) and the site’s crossing the 500-million-user mark (Zuckerberg said the journey had been “surreal”) as well as several other topics.
Check your local listings to find out when the program will air in your area, and in the meantime, check out these two teaser clips from ABC.
Will you be watching the entirety of tonight’s interview? What are your thoughts on Zuckerberg’s words? Let us know your opinions in the comments.
At Facebook, we're constantly connecting with interesting people—from experts and researchers to celebrities or visitors to our office. Occasionally, we'll share these conversations on the Facebook Blog in our "Connecting with..." series.
Chris Vein, the CIO for the City and County of San Francisco, recently predicted that social media services may displace government-run websites for many citizen interactions. Chris has played a key role in bringing access to city services to San Francisco's Facebook Page and other sites. I talked with him to learn more about the role social media can play in local government services and citizen engagement.
A lot of people think of technology as an expensive investment. How are you trying to save money and use technology to provide better services?
It really is [about] the introduction of self-service and [that is] one of the things that we have done with Facebook. Citizens don't have time to come down to city hall, they don't have time to sit and see processes that waste their time; they become very impatient and that's how government gets a bad name.
So it's really trying to figure out ways to make those services available any time, any place and make them cheaper to provide. And so when we do things like allow citizens to pay their parking tickets through a Facebook application, you are allowing citizens to be in more control of their interaction with the government rather than government in control of the interactions.
Some city services could never be provided over the Internet, but what are some of the surprising ways you have been able to use technology?
I think virtually everything can be made more efficient with technology. I think yes, it would be difficult to make garbage collection go away by automating it. However, what you can do is provide more information to citizens on when garbage day is coming and what the parking laws are on particular streets so that people don't get tickets when the garbage truck comes along.
Now that's bad for ticket revenue. But on the other side from a citizen's perspective, we are combining a bunch of technologies in order to allow the citizens to be more in control of their lives and how they interact with the city...in ways that make life easier.
So it's not just about the services themselves being provided online, it's also about the access to information of the services that helps them become more smooth or efficient.
Exactly. That's also behind all of our efforts [to make] government transparent and hopefully accountable by talking to government agencies and finding out what data sets they have [and] putting them out there.... And it really is an opportunity for the average citizen to have access to the very core data elements that we use to make our decisions.
So from a transparency and accountability standpoint, if we are moving in a direction or taking an interpretation of specific data in a way that public doesn't agree with, they can come up with their own interpretation and challenge this..using social media like the city's Facebook Page.
What has surprised you about your Facebook Page? Is it its size, the kinds of discussions happening on it? Who is responsible for your Facebook Page within your office or within the city?
[We] keep a hands-off approach to it. We have no rules about what can be talked about. Certainly, we have rules around etiquette and those kinds of things. But, it really is an opportunity to put issues that are interesting to citizens out there and let the citizens discuss [issues] with each other and with the city....
I think the best reactions that we get are about quality-of-life issues. Obviously, in a city like San Francisco, there are many sides to that issue and, therefore, many opinions on that issue. When we put those quality-of-life issues out there that are of real importance to the citizens, that's where we see the most use and the best use. I think that's why we have so many people out there, because we are willing to put those tough, thorny political issues out there and let the community talk about them and see where they are....
Many jurisdictions are still looking at social media outlets as something that has to be contained. My belief is that social media and sites like Facebook and Twitter are just new or relatively new portals into the City and County of San Francisco, and they're just like a telephone or just like a fax machine or walk-in [counter]. These sites are ways that people are accessing different services, and we have to get ahead of it.
It seems like that's a discussion that not just your city is having in the County of San Francisco. What advice would you give to other cities about how to take advantage of these tools?
The first thing is don't be afraid of these new applications because our experience is that yes, you always have outliers, but the vast majority of information that's being exchanged is useful, it's positive and you may not always like it, but it does bring a whole new set [of people] into the legislative process that you've never had before.
The second [piece of] advice is to use it as a tool, use it as a way to understand what your constituents are concerned about and what they want from you. Take that information and start building your policies around it, because it is such an efficient way of gauging public support or public desire around the issues.
Third, I think you need somebody who is willing to be in a pothole, if you will, someone who is willing to always talk to everyone about how important these channels like Facebook are to not only the citizens but also to the government and how [they can be] used to make efficient changes to government services.
Adam Conner, an associate manger on Facebook's public policy team, can't wait to be able to pay his parking tickets on Facebook.
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