Frenemies, Drupal, Facebook, and more
The whole team (except for Mike) had Facebook on the brain today, as we all (except for Mike) talked about various aspects of the social networking behemoth. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at all the interesting things (except for Mike) that we had to say!
Hello, Folks. I’m Drupal.
Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer
If you’re looking for a pre-built, customizable solution to create a website, there are many options available, but there are a few that are extremely well known for their ease of deployment and flexibility. Drupal was the option I presented today.
Drupal, by itself, allows users to create dynamic pages, controlled by a back-end CMS system, in addition to basic forum functionality and user management out of the box. From there, you can add modules to customize your site as needed, such as Google Analytics for ease of tracking without having to mess around with the code on the site, more advanced user control and functionality, calendar and event schedules, and many more.
Because of the ease of deployment, overall functionality, and unintimidating back-end, Drupal is a very popular option for this scenario.
Facebook: The Narrowing Gulf Between Real and Digital Life
Jonathan Arndt, Programmer
Today, I talked with the group about a topic near and dear to all our hearts: Facebook privacy. Specifically, how measurably disconnected real life is from some people’s digital persona. The article I shared dealt with litigation involving interpersonal relationships, and how easy it is becoming for attorneys to find evidence online. The upshot is that what people gab about online is often in direct conflict with that they are claiming is true in real life.
Most of us here knew this already, but this article provides some numbers that helped us measure the extent in some circumstances.
Facebook: More Information Than You Require
Jeff Burkholder, Engineer/Analyst
Launching off of Jonathan’s chat, I came across some interesting (at least, to me) Facebook and social networking statistics this week.
First off, the Pew Internet and American Life Project has been putting together some fantastic numbers that look at the internet and daily life in the USA. Part of this study also looks at where the internet is going in the future, and this week’s information specifically looked at the Millennial generation (ages 18-29, aka Generation Y). According to a majority of respondents in this poll, within the next 10 years, Millennials will continue in their current trend of being ‘ambient broadcasters’ on the internet, disclosing “a great deal of personal information in order to stay connected and take advantage of social, economic, and political opportunities”. In other words, the connected will … get connectedier. Or something like that.
I also talked a little about a study done on young (18-34) women and Facebook. There are some really interesting tidbits in here, including the facts that, of respondents:
- 57% say they talk to people online more than face-to-face
- 34% check Facebook immediately upon waking up; even before going to the bathroom
- 79% are fine with kissing in photos
- 58% use Facebook to keep tabs on “frenemies”
- 89% say you should never put anything on Facebook that you don’t want your parents to see
- 42% think it’s okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated
While those last two stats may seem to contradict each other, I think it more likely that 47% of respondents had no idea what they were talking about.
That last stat was made up.
Facebook: The Many Ways of Saying Welcome
Astrid Salim, Creative Director
This week, I have been working on designing Facebook welcome pages. It is usually the landing page that you see when you view a company profile on Facebook (if you are not a “Fan” yet). Smashing Magazine has compiled a list of big brand Facebook pages. So today, I shared my thought to the team about what is working or not working on these pages.
I’ll start with what I like first. One thing that these big brand pages have in common is that they engage the user to interact with the product. For example, Red Bull let the users watch their Web TV live. 1-800-Flowers lets the users take a poll on their page, send virtual gifts, see their Tweets, and more. Porsche’s page won our hearts instantly because we can customize a Porsche on the page, then share it. By engaging your Facebook user, your brand is more likely to be memorable.
However, there also some pages that I am not a big fan of. Coca-Cola, for example, requires you to allow them to pull information from your profile before you can see the page. Well, that makes me leave the page immediately. Digital Turf and Daddy Design have multi-layer navigation menus. I found that those menus are a bit overboard and distracting.
In conclusion, don’t over-design and don’t require people to do an extra step to view your page. However, do make your page interactive.
Social Media Updates and Branding
Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist
Digg is making a bid to re-spark its relevance in the social sharing space with a complete interface rebuild. I’ve been checking it out as an alpha tester, and I gave the rest of a team a brief tour of the new features.
Facebook is ditching its direct sales of virtual goods as of August 1. The official reason for closing the Facebook Gift Store is so the team can “focus instead on improving other products,” but no one’s buying that as the real reason. Some speculate that Facebook believes it can make more money by directly selling only Facebook Credits, which can then be used as currency to purchase virtual goods from third-party vendors. That would remove Facebook from the day-to-day work of managing a virtual goods store and instead let the corporation sit back and make money from exchanging real-world currency into currency for the digital realm.
The Pew Internet and American Life project released data this week that shows minorities in the U.S. are heavier cell phone users–87% of minorities own a cell phone compared to 80% of whites, and 64% of African Americans use their cell phones to access the Internet compared to 59% of the general population.
Twitter was huge during the World Cup. Whereas there is generally 750 tweets per second, at the end of one game the rate hit an all-time high of 3,283.
In addition to sharing these news items, I also took the opportunity to run some ideas past the team regarding YDOP’s own brand identity.