Facebook Page Insights Updated: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What’s New This Week?

Facebook Rolls Out Updated Page Insights: “After gathering feedback from the early users of the new Page Insights,” Facebook is “rolling out the updated Page Insights to all page owners, and introducing some new, highly requested features as well.” Click here to find out what’s changed.

"Page Insights allows you to see not only whom you've reached—but also whom you've engaged."

Facebook Redesigns Ad Buying and Reporting Tools: “Now, the ad buying process will start with a simple question: What’s your advertising objective?”

"Based on the objective a business chooses," Facebook will "now recommend an appropriate ad-type (i.e., a page post link ad to drive clicks to a website)."

Facebook Deactivates the “Who Can Look Up Your Timeline by Name?” Feature: If you used the “Who can look up your timeline by name?” feature to make your name unsearchable, this feature will be stopped. You’ll have to use the other privacy settings to control who can see your content.

If you used the "Who can look up your timeline by name?" feature to make your name unsearchable, you'll be seeing a message like this to say that your name will now be searchable.

Twitter Introduces New Features for Mobile: The new version of Twitter for Windows Phone now has “features that you can customize specifically for the Windows platform.”

"Photos and tweets can now be the backdrop of your Windows Phone lock screen."

Foursquare Rolls Out Upgrades: “You’ll notice an updated look and feel, with a simple feed that shows you what’s most relevant nearby, right now.”

Foursquare has "added a 'nearby' button. Tap it to see which of your friends are around."

Here’s more interesting news to follow:

Instagram Launches Ads: In the next couple of months, you may begin to see “an occasional ad in your Instagram feed if you’re in the United States.”

Pinterest Starts Testing Promoted Pins: “You may spot a few in your search results or category feeds on the web or in mobile apps.”

"They work just like regular pins, only they have a special 'Promoted' label, along with a link to learn more about what that means."

Introducing Social Media Marketing World: 60+ Pros Help You Master Social Media Marketing! Join Chris Brogan (co-author of The Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Michael Hyatt (author of Platform), Jay Baer (author ofYoutility), John Jantsch (author of Duct Tape Marketing), Amy Porterfield (co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies), Mark Schaefer (author of Tao of Twitter), Michael Stelzner (author of Launch) and experts from more than a dozen brands as they reveal proven social media marketing tactics at Social Media Marketing World 2014—Social Media Examiner’s mega-conference in beautiful San Diego, California.

Check out this overview of the conference or click here for more details.

Social Media Examiner Is Four Today! Social Media Examiner was launched four years ago on October 12, 2009. Here’s the story of how it all started.

Our journey at Social Media Examiner continues to be an adventure. And as social media continues to evolve, we’re sure to have a lot more in store for you in the future.

Thank you for being a part of our community!

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

Facebook Fan Pages Spam Is a $200 Million Business

Spreading spam on Facebook Pages is a booming business of at least $200 million a year. And a single post that contains a spam link is worth from $13 to $58, depending on how many likes the Facebook page has, according to researchers.

Independent researchers found 30,000 Facebook Pages (which used to be called "Fan Pages") advertised on underground spam forums. Then they analyzed the Pages, looking for posts that contained keywords like "click here," "free," "wow," or "join," followed by shortened links.

In two days in July, using two servers, the group of Italian researchers, led by Andrea Stroppa, Carlo De Micheli, and Danny Di Stefano, went through almost 700,000 posts and found out that almost 37,000 of those were spam.

"We've seen that every day there are at least 20,000 posts of wild spam pointing to e-commerce, fake news, affiliations, porn and often scams," Stroppa told Mashable.

The six researchers, who months ago shined a light on the fake Twitter followers business, studied various underground spam forums and found that for Facebook Pages with less than 30,000 likes, spam posts can be sold for as much as $20 and as low as $8 (the average is the aforementioned $13). For pages with more than 100,000 Likes, posts can cost as much as $100 dollars, and in some instances, for pages with millions of fans, the price is more than $200.

Facebook bans Pages administrators from posting advertisements. In fact, according to Facebook's Pages terms of service, "third-party advertisements on Pages are prohibited without our prior permission."

Facebook spam, while not as pervasive as email spam, is a growing problem, according to experts. Facebook said in 2012 that only 4% of the content shared on its network is spam, according to The Wall Street Journal, while more than 70% of email is spam, as recently reported by Mashable.

"Social media spam isn't yet quite seen on the same level as email spam." said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky Labs. "The problem will continue on growing until there's a bigger crackdown on businesses that are offering services to spam Facebook."

If spam keeps spreading on the social network, it could eventually hurt its business, not only because there are people that effectively advertise on Facebook without paying the company, but because users might be annoyed by spam and leave the network.

"There's a financial incentive for Facebook to address the spam problem. For one, people may stop using the service if the spam problem is too severe," explained Schouwenberg. "Secondly, as Facebook is looking into further ways to better monetize the platform they'll want to have the least amount of spam possible. Otherwise users will start grouping the legitimate ads together with the spammed ads, which will reduce the value of the legitimate ads."

Stroppa and the other researchers included a statement from a Facebook spammer they spoke to on Skype who explained how he's benefited from Facebook spam without ever being caught. (Stroppa declined to identify the spammer.)

"Facebook doesn’t ban us simply because we generate the content on Facebook itself. Everyday I materialize funny and interesting content full of phrases and so forth that is shared and liked by thousands of users," he or she reportedly said, according to the researchers. "Without the Fan Pages Facebook would be an empty place. Tell me, how many links do you see shared by your friends on your timeline everyday? You see? The answer is simple."

According to Stroppa, though, Facebook isn't doing enough in fighting this problem and might actually be turning a blind eye to it because, in the end, it might not bother them that much.

"Facebook doesn't have a couple of 100 Euro servers like the ones we have, and can monitor in real time. Facebook could fight these if it wanted," he said.

Facebook declined to comment on the research, simply sending the following statement:

"Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam is a top priority for us. We have developed a number of systems to identify spam and stop it from spreading, and we have mechanisms in place to quickly shut down Pages, accounts, and applications that are found to be in violation of our terms of service. We also offer tools for people to report Pages and posts that might be spam. We will continue to improve our spam-fighting systems so we can to ensure that the overall level of spam on Facebook remains low."

Facebook Updates Page Insights, Allows Image Posting In Comments

After listening to feedback, Facebook has updated the Page Insights tool, adding new metrics and improving the insights that were already available. A select group of Page admins have been invited to preview the updates. Facebook has also started rolling out the ability to attach images in the comment section of posts.

People Talking About This, or PTAT, has been separated into elements, so admins can now see Page Likes, Page tags and mentions, and Page checkins individually, as well as general engagement overall. The Virality metric has been renamed ‘engagement rate’, which now includes clicks.

Each post’s performance, engagement and reach can be seen on a post-specific scorecard (such as the one seen above), which collates negative and positive feedback so that the impact of each post can be more easily measured. Page admins can then identify what content garners the most interaction, helping them to develop strategies to improve page performance.

Also, insights now breaks down not only who a post has reached by age, gender, location etc., but also who has engaged with the post.

The updates were announced on Wednesday, to roll out gradually. However, Facebook has assured admins that:

The existing Page Insights will still be available for all other Page admins until later this summer, at which point we'll make the updates to Page Insights available to all marketers. At this time, we will not make changes to the Page Insights export or API. 

Facebook are also currently rolling out the ability to post images in comments. A tiny camera icon will appear on the right-hand side of the comment box, allowing users to attach a photo or picture from their device.

What do you think about the updates to the Page Insight Tool? Are you pleased that you can post images in the comments section?       

Facebook Rolls Out “Promoted Page Likes” Globally

Facebook has released “Promoted Page Likes”, a feature which has been available to U.S. page owners in beta since December. Promoted Page Likes are like Promoted Posts, allowing page owners to buy adverts based on a predetermined budget. However, unlike Promoted Posts, Promoted Page Likes bypass the complicated ad dashboard.

Promoted Page Likes, which are accessible to any page owner whose page has a profile picture and a listed location, ask administrators to decide on a daily advertising budget based on their advert’s reach. Administrators are also asked whether they want to target users by city, state/area or country.

Buying Promoted Page Likes creates three distinct advert types: sidebar ads, Page Like ads, which appear in the news feeds of both mobile and desktop devices, and Sponsored Stories, which again appear in news feeds across all devices.

Whereas Promoted Posts notify existing page fans of new content and updates posted to a page, Promoted Page Likes simply feature a page’s name, photo, description and a like button to tempt new fans to the page.

Unlike other ad features on Facebook, Promoted Page Likes need to be stopped by an administrator, otherwise they will run indefinitely.

How successful do you think Promoted Page Likes will be?