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Storyteller App Turns Facebook Posts Into Sponsored Stories [PICS]

September 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment


Social brand marketing service Wildfire has launched a Facebook App focused on creating better content for Facebook’s Sponsored Stories.

Facebook launched Sponsored Stories in January and pitched it as a more social and engaging ad format. Brands can turn user activity such as checkins, wall posts and likes into a small advertisement that appears to the right of the Newsfeed. If your friend checks into a Starbucks via Facebook, his or her checkin could make an appearance as a sponsored post the next time you open up your Facebook account.

We’ve heard good things about Sponsored Stories, but it does come with issues. The biggest one is that advertisers don’t control the content that appears in an advertisement. The problem is that most Sponsored Stories are boring. Seeing someone “like” the Starbucks Facebook Page is far less engaging than a Facebook status update talking about how much he or she loves the Starbucks Chai Tea Latte.

We suspect that’s why Facebook asked Wildfire to develop an app to make Sponsored Stories more engaging. The result is is the Wildfire Storyteller App, a Facebook application focused on turning user feedback and opinions into not just Newsfeed stories, but Sponsored Stories as well.

The application allows brands to add a new tab to their Facebook Pages. On this tab, brands can ask their fans to answer a question or provide an opinion (e.g. What’s your favorite thing about Mashable?). Users can then share those answers with their Facebook friends and post it onto their walls. These wall posts can be customized to include images, videos and descriptions the brand wants to include. A film would be able to share a promotional poster and a description in every single wall post generated from the app.

That’s not what makes this app special, though. The app’s real purpose is to generate engaging Sponsored Stories ads from all of those user responses. By asking the right question, brands can create far more engaging social ads. My friends are more likely to click on a Starbucks Sponsored Stories ad if it says “I love the Starbucks Chai Tea Latte!” than if it just says I checked into my local Starbucks franchise. Storyteller also comes with filtering options so negative comments don’t appear in Facebook ads.

Wildfire Interactive CEO Victoria Ransom says that ads generated via the Storyteller app are four times more effective than traditional Sponsored Stories. While the traditional Facebook had has a 3.3% conversion rate, Storyteller-generated ads have a 17% conversion rate. Ransom warns that Sponsored Stories are more effective with larger brands, since smaller brands simply don’t have the reach to make Sponsored Stories effective.

What do you think of Wildfire’s new Storyteller app? Is it something your company would use? Let us know your opinions in the comments.


Storyteller Tab




The user will see something like this when he or she clicks the Storyteller tab. It lets users post feedback, reactions or opinions to their Facebook walls.


Storyteller Admin Panel




Managing a Storyteller campaign is relatively straightforward.


Storyteller Sponsored Stories




Storyteller syncs up with Sponsored Stories. This makes it possible to run ads with engaging content from users, which increases the conversion rate of the ads.

More About: facebook, facebook stories, Storyteller App, wildfire

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Storyteller App Turns Facebook Posts Into Sponsored Stories [PICS]

September 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Social brand marketing service Wildfire has launched a Facebook App focused on creating better content for Facebook's Sponsored Stories.

Facebook launched Sponsored Stories in January and pitched it as a more social and engaging ad format. Brands can turn user activity such as checkins, wall posts and likes into a small advertisement that appears to the right of the Newsfeed. If your friend checks into a Starbucks via Facebook, his or her checkin could make an appearance as a sponsored post the next time you open up your Facebook account.

We've heard good things about Sponsored Stories, but it does come with issues. The biggest one is that advertisers don't control the content that app…
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More About: Facebook, Storyteller App, facebook stories, wildfire

Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Gilt Brings Exclusive Sales to Facebook

August 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment


Gilt has added ecommerce functionality to its Facebook Pages, giving fans early — and in some cases, exclusive — access to a range of merchandise across Gilt’s categories for women, men, children and home.

Each category will have its own sale beginning at 12 p.m. ET on Mondays.

This week, Gilt Women is offering three products — a necklace, cuff and skirt — selected by one of its buyers exclusively to Facebook fans. Gilt Man is likewise making three products available only on Facebook, and Gilt Home is giving fans early access to merchandise from Vera Wang’s Home line.

Gilt Children has partnered with Nickelodeon for its Facebook kickoff, offering early access to a range of SpongeBob-themed goods.

Users can purchase items directly on Facebook using their Gilt username and password and checkout.

Gilt has long seen the value in providing Facebook fans with extra incentives: Historically, fans have been able to preview the site’s daily flash sales an hour early, and Gilt City extends special privileges to its rewards program members via a private Facebook Group.

More About: facebook, gilt, gilt groupe

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New Facebook Analytics Tool Digs Deeper Than Insights

August 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment


A webpage owner has seemingly unlimited choice in products that slice and dice information about those who visit her page. Real time? Personal? With a heat map? No problem. Facebook page managers, however, don’t have it as easy.

The Google Analytics of Facebook is called “Insights,” and for someone who is dealing with the typical Facebook fan page, it’s a sufficient meat-and-potatoes analysis tool. PageLever, a Y Combinator startup that launched on Wednesday, is a more elaborate version of Insights for brands that want to get a bit deeper in their analysis — a group of users that so far includes YouTube, Microsoft, Mint and Kayak.

PageLever shows impressions (any time a story loads in a browser, whether on your page or not) for any date range, not just month or week. It separates unique impressions from repeat impressions so that you can see your true reach, and it shows when and where fans “unliked” your page. You can also look at what type of content — photos, video, text or flash — your audience responds to best.

Most of the data, says co-founder Jeff Widman, comes from Insights’ API but is not necessarily visible within the Insights dashboard. Services like Buddy Media and Webtrends already accomplish similar feats with public information and the Insights API, but none to Widman’s knowledge take advantage of the data collected by obtaining permissions from the page administrator using Facebook Connect. This means that the tool can’t be used to measure a competitor’s traffic, but also that PageLever has access to more data.

More data theoretically gives page managers a leg up in Facebook’s somewhat frustrating version of the SEO game.

“Essentially it helps find more eyeballs for your content,” Widman says.

Check out the screenshots below and let us know if you’d find PageLever useful.

























More About: analytics, data, facebook insights, Page lever

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New Facebook Analytics Tool Digs Deeper Than Insights

August 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment


A webpage owner has seemingly unlimited choice in products that slice and dice information about those who visit her page. Real time? Personal? With a heat map? No problem. Facebook page managers, however, don’t have it as easy.

The Google Analytics of Facebook is called “Insights,” and for someone who is dealing with the typical Facebook fan page, it’s a sufficient meat-and-potatoes analysis tool. PageLever, a Y Combinator startup that launched on Wednesday, is a more elaborate version of Insights for brands that want to get a bit deeper in their analysis — a group of users that so far includes YouTube, Microsoft, Mint and Kayak.

PageLever shows impressions (any time a story loads in a browser, whether on your page or not) for any date range, not just month or week. It separates unique impressions from repeat impressions so that you can see your true reach, and it shows when and where fans “unliked” your page. You can also look at what type of content — photos, video, text or flash — your audience responds to best.

Most of the data, says co-founder Jeff Widman, comes from Insights’ API but is not necessarily visible within the Insights dashboard. Services like Buddy Media and Webtrends already accomplish similar feats with public information and the Insights API, but none to Widman’s knowledge take advantage of the data collected by obtaining permissions from the page administrator using Facebook Connect. This means that the tool can’t be used to measure a competitor’s traffic, but also that PageLever has access to more data.

More data theoretically gives page managers a leg up in Facebook’s somewhat frustrating version of the SEO game.

“Essentially it helps find more eyeballs for your content,” Widman says.

Check out the screenshots below and let us know if you’d find PageLever useful.

























More About: analytics, data, facebook insights, Page lever

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Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Want To See Who Is Viewing Your Facebook Profile?

July 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment


The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: WhoIsLive

Quick Pitch: WhoIsLive lets you see who is viewing the same webpage as you and start conversations with them.

Genius Idea: Making every web page instantly social, with or without the participation of its publisher

What if every web page you visited became an instant chat room? Startup WhoIsLive is launching a browser plugin Tuesday that could become one way to find out.

The Internet Explorer and Firefox plugin creates a browser sidebar that shows you other users who are looking at the same web page. Using the sidebar, you can set a status message that everyone else on the page can see, or you can chat with people individually.

Theoretically, the tool can show you who is viewing your Facebook profile, allow you to ask for guidance from other shoppers on an ecommerce site or be used as a real-time discussion tool on blogs and news sites. The websites’ publishers don’t need to install anything for the plugin chat room to work on their sites.

But there is one rather huge caveat: Users can only see each other, not web browsers who haven’t installed the plugin — which means that a critical mass of users needs to be reached before the tool is useful. And before you can see who is viewing your Facebook profile, you’ll need to make yourself visible to people who might be monitoring their profiles with the same tool.

“It’s like anything else that is related to social,” explains co-founder Elad Natanson. “It’s a give and take. ”

The idea behind WhoIsLive is a great one. Companies like Marginize have long been aiming to build a social layer on the web that is based on what you care about instead of who you know, and enabling people on the same page to connect is a smart way to do it. If the tool gains widespread adoption, then Natanson’s prediction that WhoIsLive will “change the way that people use the Internet” isn’t unreasonable.

Getting to that critical mass, however, is the startup’s biggest hurdle. If it pulls it off, Natanson says WhoIsLive will sell a premium product to site owners that designates them as such in the chat list. Many services like WebsiteAlive and Livezilla offer similar live-chat customer service tools, but site visitors can only chat with the site owner. The premium product would also offer site owners personalized analytics.

“You always see the numbers,” Natanson says. “But in this case you can actually see who your visitors are … You can connect with them.”

Photo courtesy of istockphoto, ChristopherBernard

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: chat, marginize, startup, whoislive

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40 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed

July 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment


Coming at you with the weekly roundup of features you may have missed on Mashable. Can you handle our collection of Google+ tips, mobile how-to’s, and general geekery? We thought so.

We especially hope you love the editors’ picks this week because we have a hunch they’re exactly what you need. Read on for the latest in tech resources, gathered together for your convenience in this handy one-stop guide.

Editors’ Picks

Social Media

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business & Marketing

For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

 

Image courtesy of Flickr, webtreats.

More About: business, List, Lists, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0, social media, tech, technology

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Double Rainbow Guy Is Running for President via Facebook; You Can Too

July 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment


Paul Vasquez is better known to the Internet as the “Double Rainbow Guy.” He lives in a mobile home just outside of Yosemite National Park, tinkers in organic farming and alternative energy, and is famous for his exuberant appreciation of nature’s post-rain light display.

Derek Broes lives in Los Angeles. He is the former senior vice president of the digital division at Paramount Pictures and spent four years running global wireless strategy for Microsoft.

Possibly the only thing that Vasquez and Broes have in common: they are both running for president in 2012. And unless you happen to be Facebook friends with either man, you probably haven’t noticed.

Votocracy: “Your Personal Campaign Machine”

While mainstream candidates like Mitt Romney and President Obama are set to campaign and debate in person, candidates like Vasquez and Broes are stating their positions and taking questions on a Facebook app called Votocracy.

“The packaging that we’re accustomed to in politics — it’s really difficult for that to survive in social media,” says Votocracy founder and CEO Bryan Lee. Networks like Facebook, he says, are “more connected, more human, more raw” than traditional campaigning.

Lee, who has held executive positions at both Sony and Microsoft, launched the platform on June 1. Since then, about 370 people have announced their intentions to run for president using it. The sign-up cost is $99, but don’t worry if that’s too rich for your blood. Candidates can start by putting as little as $1 toward this fee and collect the rest from their supporters. Compare that to the $8,100 you would have to spend just to get on the ballot in all 50 states, according to the nonpartisan newsletter Ballot Access News.

Candidates collect supporters by getting people to “Like” their votocracy pages. Vasquez’s page has about 50 such supporters. Broes’s page has about 40. Right now, most candidates on the site have fewer than five supporters.

By 2012, there will be one official Votocracy candidate. The plan is to host online primaries for every state — and Washington, D.C. — to determine a winner from each. Then the 51 final contestants compete in a televised race that looks something like American Idol, although Votocracy doesn’t have an official TV deal just yet.

To Be President or To Be Heard?

Paul Vasquez, the “double rainbow guy,” is running for president on the Votocracy platform. His campaign video, above, has almost 10,000 views.

Presidential prospects for anyone running on Votocracy seem slim. But that’s not necessarily how the candidates see it.

“A new candidate will arise out of this,” Broes says. “There will be new people that are recognized in the political arena because they didn’t have to wiggle their way into the club to gain equal exposure and a serious evaluation of their ideas and points of view.”

For Vasquez, who is running with the campaign slogan “Emergency! Alternative Energy!”, the point of the race is less about being president and more about being heard.

“If people could pay attention to what I’m doing,” he says in the same tone that made his rainbow video an instant YouTube sensation, “then maybe they’ll have a revelation that these are the things that are important and we need to be focusing on them.”

Social Media & the American Dream

Votocracy plans to help people connect on issues, by matching people based on similar political beliefs (“You might find out that Joe in Indiana or Tom in Kentucky answers questions like you do,” says Lee). But it also promises an American dream: “With Votocracy, anyone with the passion to run for president – including you – can get involved, get heard, and attract supporters from all across the country… without political experience or big financial backers,” reads the app’s homepage.

We have long been teaching our kids that anyone can be president of the United States. In a world that increasingly creates its own media, is this more likely? And if so, should we select our presidential candidates the same way that we select our pop idols?

“Our elected officials really reflect the media of the day,” Lee says. “FDR was classically called the radio president, and then we had Kennedy and Reagan and Clinton who are television presidents. And when social media becomes the media of the day, it’s going to be fun to see what kind of politician emerges from that.”

More About: 2012 campaign, double rainbow guy, double-rainbow, facebook, politics, votocracy

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Pixable Sorts Videos Your Friends Post on Facebook

July 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment


Pixable’s apps help users sort through the deluge of photos that result from multiple photo-sharing services and constant access to smartphone cameras. Now, it’s applying the same concept to video.

The startup is launching two new feeds on Wednesday that show users videos that have been recently posted to Facebook or uploaded to Facebook by their friends.

Both video feeds now appear in the “category” section of Pixable’s browser app and will be added to the iPhone, iPad apps at the end of the summer. One of the feeds is useful for scrolling through the YouTube humor that friends post. The other keeps you up to date on personal videos your friends have created.

Pixable’s photo-sorting categories like “best of the week” or “family photos” operate in a similar manner. All comments, likes and other functions of a regular Facebook video are maintained. Browsing them just becomes a more streamlined process.

More About: facebook, Photos, photosharing, Pixable

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The Interconnected World of Tech Companies [INFOGRAPHIC]

July 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The “tech world” is really more of a “tech family.” Between digital giants’ appetites for acquisitions and the tendency of their ex-employees to start new companies, it’s easy to see how nearly every blip in the ecosystem is closely related.

We’ve mapped just a few of these family ties between “Xooglers,” the “PayPal Mafia”, “Softies” and the many other tech connectors who have yet to be nicknamed.

Our guess is that if you gathered a handful of tech veterans in a room, you could keep the tech connection game going forever. So while this graphic is hardly exhaustive, we’ll keep it going in the comments — feel free to add connections to the list!


Infographic design by Nick Sigler

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, BrianAJackson

More About: amazon, apple, ebay, facebook, Google, infographic, paypal, tech, tech world

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Filed Under: Facebook, Google, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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