1. Le nombre de caractères disponible pour écrire un post est passé de 500 à  5.000 caractères soit 10x plus.
   
2. Il ne vous faudra plus attendre d’avoir 25 fans pour revendiquer une URL personnalisée.
3. Vous pouvez désormais “liker” ou commenter une Page sans en être “fan”
   
   
4. La barre de recherche à été allongée ( et même peut-être un peu trop) et bénéficie donc maintenant d’une meilleure visibilité.
5. Désormais lorsque vous utiliser Facebook “en tant que page” ou en tant que “profil”, la photo de profil se change automatiquement.
   
6. Lorsqu’une photo ou un commentaire sur une photo posté sur une photo d’un ami, celle ci apparaît de manière beaucoup plus visible
   
   
7. Le nouveau Ticker de Facebook basé su Twitter vous montre en temps réel tout ce que font vos amis et les pages que vous suivez avant même que ces infos n’apparaissent sur mon fil d’actualité. Il vous est dès lors très facile d’accéder à tout ce contenu en passant votre souris sur le post ou en cliquant dessus vous pouvez directement le “liker” ou le commenter” sans quitter la page sur laquelle vous êtes. Lorsque le chat est activé, le ticker se positionne au dessus de sorte à ne rien rater de ce que font vos amis.
8. Le mur d’actualité (News Feed) a lui aussi subi un lourd changement.  Fini le “Top Story” ou le “Most recent” . Toute votre actualité est désormais à la même place avec les actualités les plus intéressantes tout en haut. Si vous n’avez pas visité Facebook depuis longtemps, les premières actualités que vous verrez seront les “tops photos” et statuts de vos amis publiés pendant votre absence de Facebook. Vous pouvez les reconnaître par le petit coin bleu situé en haut à gauche de l’actualité.Il vous est également possible de décider si vous voulez que cette info apparaisse ou non comme une “Top Story” en cliquant sur le coin supérieur gauche de l’info.
   
9.  La barre bleue de votre Facebook s’est également dotée d’un menu différent en haut à droite
   
10. La fonctionnalité du “Poke” a été mise à l’écart et il vous faudra maintenant cliquer d’abord dans un menu déroulant avant de pouvoir “poker” votre ami! ;)
11. La barre bleue de Facebook est maintenant toujours visible même lorsque vous descendez en bas de page.

Tous ces changements ont de quoi faire tourner la tête tout en sachant que ceux interviennent la semaine du F8. Nous y reviendrons dans un prochain billet pour vous expliquer ce qui y a été dévoilé.

Vous avez déjà eu sans doute tous envie de poster du contenu sur votre profil Facebook en vous disant que vous n’aviez pas envie que votre patron ou votre famille ne puisse voir le contenu. Vous avez également eu ce sentiment de ne pas voir assez de contenu de vos amis les plus proches ou de votre famille. Créer des listes, c’est long et c’est surtout ennuyant à souhait. C’est là que Facebook intervient.

Au préalable, pour chaque liste créée, il vous fallait aller dans vos privacy settings afin de sélectionner quelles listes avaient/n’avaient pas accès au contenu que vous postiez. Grâce aux smarts lists cela se fait en un tour de main!

Avec l’arrivée des smarts-lists plus besoin de créer soi-même les listes, celles-ci s’updatent toutes seules basées sur les points communs entre votre profil et celui de vos amis tels que votre emploi, votre école, votre famille et votre ville.  Vous aurez donc un news feed personnalisé (accès à gauche de votre newsfeed et non plus en haut ) avec les personnes qui vous sont le plus proche tout en pouvant skipper les infos venant de personnes que vous ne connaissez pas plus que cela.

A noter que ces listes sont optionnelles. Si vous n’aimez pas les listes, vous n’avez pas à les utiliser.

Ce n’est pas tout! Si vous aviez déjà créé des listes (comme moi), vous vous demandez sans doute comment les fusionner! Voici la marche à suivre:

1. Cliquez sur la smart-list en question (dans ce cas ci, “Family”)
   
2. Cliquez sur “Manage List”
   
3. Vous avez maintenant le choix entre différentes options telles que renommer la liste, ajouter/supprimer des amis et l’option qui nous intéresse dans ce cas-ci: Assembler les listes (Merge List). Vous avez également la possibilité de manière beaucoup plus rapide et claire qu’auparavant de sélectionner quels types d’updates chaque liste aura accès.
4. Il ne vous reste plus maintenant qu’à coupler votre anceinne liste avec la smart list que Facebook à créée pour vous!

L’opération est à répéter pour chaque liste que vous voudriez assembler. Vous pouvez bien entendu ne pas utiliser cette nouvelle fonctionnalité et continuer à utiliser vos précédentes listes.

What future can we expect for these rather basic functions?

What innovation might become the game changer?

Last Monday, we were happy to help Mobile Monday Brussels organizing a debate about the future of Voice and SMS to try answering those questions, here is a short debrief and some point of views that I found interesting.

In the panel, several views from different worlds:

• Jeroen Van Glabbeek (@jeroenvglabeek), CEO at CM Groep (CM Telecom)
• José Zurstrassen (@jozez), board member of BeCherry and Mondial Telecom
• Siddy Jobe (@siddyjobe), Equity Analyst at ESN and Bank Degroof
• Philippe Toussaint, Director Products & Services Marketing at Mobistar

SMS and voice in Belgium

On the usage, Philippe Toussaint explains the number of text messages sent has been multiplied by 3 in 4 years. Basically, no matter how many SMS you give a youngster (300…500.1000), he or she will use them. José Zurstrassen adds to this that if youngsters use text messages, it might be because they have been taught to do so by their parents. Jeroen also gave us a very insightful picture on the Dutch market. While it’s obvious that the product subsidization helped the market penetration of the smartphone, it’s still not so obvious that everyone will soon be connected. 30% market penetration for mobile internet is already an achievement compared to our 15% in Belgium, but there is a challenge ahead to get the next 70% on board.

An incentive to look for alternatives? As Siddy pointed out, the out-of-bundle calls and SMS are probably a nice incentive to explore alternatives such as Whatsapp, Viber or BeCherryApp : “If you have 1gb data on your data plan, you can fit quite a lot of SMS or speech in there with such solutions”.

Regulation?

While the telco sector must navigate with strong regulations, the new actors, whether they are well established such as Skype or emerging like Viber for instance do not fall into the same kind of regulation.

Innovation !

We talk about big players, regulations, companies that are not used to to partner and it is probably on the side of innovation that we need to look at. Small players will emerge and are likely to surprise the voice & SMS, and more generally the mobile market. Working on mobile payments requires to marry a bank with a telco operator, a real challenge to combine those worlds. The same story applies to the content industry, where many business models need to be reinvented.

And what about the future?

The word convenience and content are probably the keys.

Giving a call or a video call from a TV, a tablet or a smartphone must be straightforward, while content is and still will be for some time the best way to catch attention. In the future, smart partnerships between telcos, banks, media will surely appear and hopefully surprise us as much as the new initiatives started from scratch.

So many interesting discussions, together with a great team spirit and a lot of fun made me think that, even when we celebrate, we are in line with our three core values of Knowledge Sharing, Collaborative approach in what we do, and all this with lot’s of Flexibility.

I’m looking forward to the next months with new ways of using and reinventing new and old media ! But just wonder how much time it will take until the lovely “arbre à bonbons” will be totally empty :-)

More pictures available on Faceboook

It is important to emphasize the value of listening to what internet users are saying and genuinely interacting with them, before turning them into loyal clients. Their input is equally important as a valuable source of innovation for your company.

This blogpost is quoted and adapted from the article in French.

Finding your Online Opinion Leaders

The first step consists of observing and identifying influential personalities on the internet, in order to influence them yourself. This method is used by Caroline Maerten, head of the social media unit at Cleverwood, an enterprise specialized in communication and consulting in new media.

“We start by finding online personalities who can directly influence potential clients of an enterprise.” One example? The event for Eurostar organized by Cleverwood for. In 2009 we organized a day in London for members of the Brussels Girl Geek Dinner. A carefully chosen target group, as the association was created by Clo Willaerts to unite online-active women who are passionate about technology.

BGGD went shopping in London with Eurostar

“We took 40 girl geeks from Belgium to London. Eurostar offered them a VIP shopping day: a partnership was created with various London shops, they were greeted with a glass of champagne, discount or a free manicure”, says Caroline Maerten.

And to further boost their enthusiasm, a mobile application was created specifically for this occasion: “We knew they liked testing new products and keep in touch. That’s why we developed an application that lets them locate themselves on Google Maps while sending tweets or Flickr photos with custom captions like: I’m sure you’ll like this item, it’s in that shop.”

“The girls loved it!” Caroline Maerten remembers.

Effective Communication in Social Media

The results of this action were, according to Cleverwood: 700 posts and 1.000 tweets sent on the day itself, 500 photos exchanged and 76 posts published on the personal blogs of the girl geeks, generating some 600 comments within their communities.

“It worked really well, we received really positive feedback. Their publication brought over 430.000 visitors to the website. A good example of the power of social media!” Caroline Maerten believes.

As explained by Clo Willaerts, once the first observation is completed and the behaviors are identified, it is time to start communicating with the customers and post content on Facebook or LinkedIn.

From Conversation to Conversion

For Clo Willaerts, a conversion don’t just mean the sale of a product. You have to interact with your clients in order to help them purchase what it is they need and desire.

This position is also shared by Caroline Maerten: “Aggressive push marketing and ‘one shot’ campaigns cannot build a lasting relationship with customers. The good news is that more and more brands are becoming aware of the importance of social media for their brand, not just as a way to service clients but also in terms of sales.

For further reading, download the full articles here: page 48 (PDF 979KB) and page 49 (PDF 1MB). Source: Le Vif, Convertir l’internaute en client, 29 april 2001, pp. 48-49.

“How to make profits from your blog?”

With this question Trends opens it’s article. Few bloggers can make a living off of their blog, but some of them manage to.

“Don’t make any illusions: to live off your blog, you have to attract a collosal number of visitors”, says Olivier Beaujean, co-founder of Cleverwood. Advertising is one of the most common sources of income.

However, not everyone is in it for the money.

“I don’t think making money is the primary objective of bloggers. Their main goal is sharing their experiences”, says Caroline Maerten, head of the social media department at Cleverwood.

For further reading, download the full articles here:

• French: Comment rentabiliser votre blog? (PDF 180 KB).
• Dutch: Hoe haalt u winst uit uw blog? (PDF 168 KB).

Every year, EURES teams throughout the EU to organize hundreds of ‘European Job Days’ – the perfect place to recruit, meet employers, discuss your plans with a EURES Advisor or find out more about how the EU promotes job mobility in Europe.

The EURES Online Job Days is a pilot project created together by Cleverwood, Consilia and EURES to complement their existing web events such as the virtual job fairs, webinars and job interviews.

This current pilot edition gathered 4 test countries: Italy, Finland, Estonia and the Netherlands. The team set-up by Cleverwood helped jobseekers by providing information about working and living in the EU through a social media promotion and communication during the event. Extensive usage of Twitter, Facebook, Slideshare, LinkedIn or Youtube has been done to give a maximum visibility to the event.

You can view the post event EOJD website here: http://www.euresonlinejobdays.eu

Focus Points

EURES Online Job Days is a pilot project that lets citizens ask detailed questions regarding their experience and receive live answers from EURES advisers. This event was ideal for people who wanted to:

• Get information on working in other countries
• Search for jobs offers (more than 1.000.000 job offers)
• Have a live and personalized chat with advisors
• See open positions and be put in relation with employers
• Tweet with our team for questions and comments
• See practical information about employment

This online event was open to all European citizens.

A Social Media event

During two days, all European jobseekers had the opportunity to interact directly with our 4 available advisors. They had the choice to communicate with online direct tools such as Skype, MSN , GTalk and of course EURES ‘ Twitter account with the special #EOJD hastag and Facebook page.

The event proved the huge interest about European job mobility, and this EURES Online Job Days pilot can be sure of a bright future.

The results

The initial objective forecast during the analysis phase was 250 chat session requests. It has been largely overcome in the field, as the event reached more than 500 requests. After the event, many jobseekers met their needs regarding their questions about jobs in the EU.

With a modest promotional budget, social media advertising and warm-up activities of Community Managers altogether generated considerable word of mouth, which brought a huge traffic on the platform (more than 10,500 visitors in a single week).

EURES on Social Media

About Consilia

Consilia is a unique partnership of communications professionals. They are highly experienced specialists in the handling of complex and intractable communications issues, including crisis communications and information management. They offer plain, candid advice based on extensive expertise in media, journalism, technology, broadcasting and public relations.

About EURES

Set up in 1993, EURES is a European wide employment service, supported by all the PES (Public Employment Services) in Europe. EURES provides information, advice and recruitment / placement (job-matching) services across the European Economic Area (EU plus Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland) for the benefit of workers and employers or any other citizen wishing to benefit from the principle of the free movement of workers.

About Cleverwood

Cleverwood is your New Media Consulting partner, providing expert new media profiles, expertise, knowledge and consulting services for Web, Mobile, Interactive Television and emerging channels.

Cleverwood consultants work for medium to large corporation in the public and private sector. Every day, we help our client finding « New (ways of using) Media ». We work in in partnership with our clients, very often on-site within the marketing or communication teams, taking up roles such as project manager, e-marketing manager, web & mobile product managers, community managers, web copywriting & editorial strategist, conversion marketing, usability and information architecture, blogger, e-reputation, social media strategist… and many more !

Contact information

Caroline Maerten
Head of Social Media @ Cleverwood
+32 (0) 474 94 09 00
caroline.maerten@cleverwood.be
@rollingtalks
www.cleverwood.be

• Read the EURES Online Job Days – Executive Summary
• View the pictures

Following the Friday Session about ‘Social media and Transparency – New Ways of Lobbying?’, I come back to the era of transparency as a starting point for another “New ways of” article. Going further into the analyse of transparency trough social media, I want to talk about the bright and the dark side of this trendy concept.

The era of transparency in which we are supposed to be is the slogan you cannot avoid. Companies, associations are claiming proudly and loudly: we are transparent! Transparency is seen as a solution to internal crisis and mostly integrated within an autoregulated system.

“We are transparent in our work, says CWG secretary general”

“We are transparent” – Tullow Oil boss

“Social Media ROI: we are transparent, so we better have passion for what we do”

“Why we need transparent pricing in microfinance” – Mftransparency.org

Transparent does not mean translucent : the bright side

First of all, what is transparency? Being transparent includes clarity, information. It is mostly a state of mind: accept that others could have access to information to which they would not have normally. With a transparent information, people do not have to search; it is available right here and now.

This claim for transparency appeared for the first time with the Enlightenment Movement. This movement promoted a more participative political system in opposition to the institutions and their fuzzy way of working. Kant, for example, promoted the concept of Publicity (make things public) as a condition of democracy [i].

Public Opinion is watching you

Nowadays, transparency is claimed in every field. From politics [ii] to banks [iii], through solar panels installator… all of them are requested to have a transparent information about their product and/or service. This request for transparency is supposed to avoid the uncorrect behaviors and bring trust to the customers/clients. Transparency would normally be linked to an ethical behavior.

In which way? If you are promoting yourself as transparent, you let others having a look at what you do. If anybody has access to this information, you are now submitted to another law!?! Public Opinion is watching you! You became the perfect well-equiped company of “doing things well”. Now transparency gives people the right to ask who, how and why a company is doing such things. People have the permission to give their point of view and arguing if it is not done the way they want it. They are expecting from you a certain behavior. In fact, they are expecting you to be legitime in what you do, to have an “ethical” label. You gave them a “droit de regard”, and they use it, as it was predictable, as a “droit de juger”. This right of inspection was used to inspect, strictly speaking. Following this ethical movement of inspection, Code of Conduct, White Book, labels, and guidelines… are doing great for now.

The shareholders era

Social media platforms are playing in this general movement of inspection. They are transparent in the way they are diffusing and submitting some information to the Public Opinion. It is a way to diffuse and manage your image, your ethical reputation (among other things, of course). They help making information accessible.

We are now dealing in the company culture with an extended stakeholders community, the shareholders community, to which consumers belong. “Shareholder” means that the company interest cannot be resumed to the only ones who have a financial interest, the interest must be widen to all kind of stakes.

Transparent does not mean translucent : the dark side

Transparent does not mean translucent! Being transparent does not include avoiding any secret and reveal everything publically. Some information need to be private, the secret is intrinsically linked to heir own nature [iv]. It also means that some obligations can be avoided. The lie by omission is permitted! Between the image communicated and the actions, there is a gap.

Social media don’t want to be transclucent, they are transparent in the way they diffuse information. Excepting that before diffusion, there is always selection of information. Here is the first gap.

The second gap can be found in the use and the knowledge people have of these technical issues:

• Are people aware of the way social media are managed?
• Are they aware of the privacy policies?
• Will social media still be open to the collective knowledge for free?

Social media can be a real weapon of reputation management but I wouldn’t talk about a revolution! I prefer being sceptical and pragmatical. Even if of course nobody can predict the way people are going to use social media in 40 years, there is still some things that must be kept in mind when we use it on a daily base. The gap between the transparency declared and the transparency applied in social media is one of these things.

Ethics were supposed to change the world

In this discussion, nothing is black or white, maybe is it my philosophical background talking here?!? One thing is sure: transparency is not as easy to study as it seems. We are only at the beginning of the conflict between transparency, social media and ethics.

Concluding with a personal reflexion. When I started studying ethics, I was convinced companies behavior was about to change. Ethics could change the world! Now I am more in a … disenchantment! Concretly, ethics reflects more in words than in facts! Organisations use the media channels to diffuse ethical principles. Even if I cannot blame companies which are submitting themselves to ethical principles, companies have tendency to follow in general the green and ethical brain-washing without wishing a change of their real problematic behaviors.

[ii] Example: Transparency International Belgium

[iii] Example: ECB

[iv] Some professions are defined by the professional secret and the violation of this Code of Honor leads to the exclusion/humiliation of the peers. Ex: doctors, advocates, bankers…

Cleverwood is happy to be part of this initiative. Together with 5 other companies, we are looking forward to help many companies explore new ways of using media.

Read more and download the presentation of this label at the Rossel Advertising website.

Everything begun with some chronologically calculated posts made by members, renamed for the occasion. All the posts together were forming  ”DK Bunny Butcher”. In just 14 posts/capital letters, the nice tone of voice of the page begun to be submerged with PETA critics!

On the brand side, total silence, no reaction, no comment! One “DK Bunny Butcher” and no less than 87 posts, +/- 825 likes and +/- 247 comments later, still no reactions from DKNY.

The comments were growing increasingly with the hours, but still no reaction… For 6 hours the fan page was an accumulation of insults and abuses.

After 10 straight hours, when the news was already buzzing the social media world the next day, the brand did react… but certainly not how it was supposed to! The community manager deleted all the annoying posts and blocked the access to the wall.

Now, if you go on the fan page, nothing can be posted on the wall and none of these old posts are visible, they were erased – except some comments about official posts from DKNY.

On Twitter, same thing, DKNY doesn’t feel disturbed by the buzz…

… although the Twitter planet is talking about the DKNY situation :

It really doesn’t seem to disturb them talking fashion! What a nice way to deny the problem, isn’t it?

Once again, this example shows the importance for the community manager to have some guidelines, especially to manage crisis periods. Deleting is not a solution, nor ignoring the problem. One could ask : Is it a good solution to stop the access to the wall during a crisis time? Maybe, maybe not…

It is probably not the end, we’ll follow this with great attention :-)

One thing is certain: we find here another perfect example of how social media can be used to lobbying and how transparency leads to the obligation of an undeniable ethical behavior! (Cf: Friday Session -  How do you integrate Ethics with Lobbying in Social Media.)

I’ll keep you posted…