We at Opus Communication keep an in-depth look into the Social Media World, what new trends are coming up, which social media network is gaining user share etc.

People have asked whether Facebook would make a “Dislike” button for years, and for years Facebook has said that it wouldn’t. It’s kind of obvious why this cycle happens: there’s a natural impulse to want to see a “Dislike” button next to Facebook’s everywhere Like button, but there are also some real problems with that. Facebook doesn’t want people using “Dislike” as a way to harass or disrespect other people, and — more cynically — you can argue that it certainly doesn’t want people Disliking the sponsored posts that companies pay to put in your News Feed.

That all said, Facebook has actually had a change of heart. It’s making a Dislike button — or something like it — and it’s seems that going to head into testing soon. “People have asked about the ‘Dislike’ button for many years … and today is a special day, because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it and are very close to shipping a test of it,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today during a public Q&A session, according to CNBC.

There aren’t a lot of details away from that, but Zuckerberg says that Facebook’s target is to apply the button in a way that makes it a tool to “express empathy” — as in, to Dislike a sad moment that a friend shared — than a way to spoil someone. So while Zuckerberg may have called it a “Dislike” button, what Facebook is building may estimated better to a button for sharing compassion when a thumbs up is socially unsuitable.

“We don’t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people’s posts,” Zuckerberg said. “That doesn’t seem like the kind of community that we want to create: you don’t want to go through the process of sharing some moment that was important to you in your day and have someone down vote it.”

Hi guys! The social media experts at Opus Communication believe all the tools of marketing demand proper planning. Be it traditional marketing or digital marketing, it all requires a strategic plan! Opus communication firmly believes, that even today, Facebook is the strongest social media tool for marketing. But there are certain tricks by which you can run a stable Facebook page. So let us enlighten you on the rules of facebook posting!

As a general rule, Socialbakers found that posting once per week on Facebook was so low as to lose connection with your audience and posting more than twice per day was crossing the line into annoying.

Its 2011 study found that the sweet spot is five to 10 posts per week.

Additional research by Track Social in 2012 confirmed that there is indeed a drop in response per post beyond the one-post-per-day mark.

When a brand posts twice a day, those posts only receive 57% of the likes and 78% of the comments per post. The drop-off continues as more posts are made in the day.

However, Track Social went a step further to see the effect that multiple posts per day had on a page’s total responses in a given. In this instance, there was no significant change as post frequency increased. This suggests you won’t lose out on conversations if you increase how often you post.

Facebook,as we all know, was established by Harvard University drop-out Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg made Facebook as a selective informal communication site for Harvard University understudies. By just permitting people with Harvard understudy ID’s it immediately made Facebook “cool,” like you were a piece of something uncommon and exceptional. After it was prominent among the Harvard University understudy body, Facebook was acquainted with a couple neighboring colleges too.

Facebook proceeded with this procedure until almost every college was incorporated in this Facebook “corner.” By this point, Facebook was a trendy expression among understudies, and when Facebook was at long last open to general society, everybody realized what Facebook was about and was prepared to join. As of right now in the trip, Facebook was at that point bound to succeed.

There are a couple of things to bring up too relating to the diverse interfaces in the middle of Facebook and Myspace. Myspace, even today, has monster promotions on their landing page before you login and even some after you login. Facebook, then again, has zero promotions on the landing page before you login and little advertisements as an afterthought after you login which make no detriment for the clients. Likewise, Facebook held up until it was gigantically well known before presenting Facebook publicizing.

Myspace’s interface permitted clients to make interesting foundations, play music, shroud remarks, and so forth. Facebook took after Google’s case and comprehended the force of less. Everything on Facebook is perfect and sorted out, which is extremely satisfying to the eye.

Facebook additionally comprehended the potential it had for organizations, and started to rigging quite a bit of what they do towards helping organizations build their online vicinity through their system. Subsequently, you see Facebook getting free promoting all over with each business welcoming their perusers, adherents, viewers, and so on to join their Facebook page.

Essentially, Facebook was designed for the client’s experience on their site while Myspace was basically centered on the backers.

Social Networking website provide us with fun, excitement and knowledge. They have never provided its users any direct monetary gain. Well, this was a passé! A new social network claims its goal is sharing among its users- including the profits!

Bubblews is about to launch a new platform, which aims to bring together people by offering them a small amount of ad revenues to users, every time they post or share! Doesn’t it sound exciting?

Some facts you should know about this new social network website:

Founders Arvind Dixit and Jason Zuccari say bubblews.com will deliver advertising related to the content posted on the site — but contend that they are up front about this business model.“We’re a business so we will have to monetize this, but we are willing to compensate you for your social interactions,” Dixit told AFP.

1. While other social networks promote themselves as a free place to mingle and share, they end up making money in “intrusive ways,” such as tracking users’ browsing histories, said Dixit.
2. Dixit and Zuccari said Bubblews will not “mine” data from users’ browsing history through files known as “cookies.” Instead, it will glean information from the postings themselves, which will have a minimum of 400 characters.“Because people are writing at least 400 characters, through the posts we can understand their personality,” Dixit said.
3. “Now each person becomes an identity, not a cookie, or something you spy on.”
4. The name merges the word “bubble” to symbolise one’s thinking and “news,” the founders say.
5. The first version of Bubblews launched in 2012 in beta or test mode, and the founders say it drew tens of thousands of people posting and as many as 20 million visitors from around the world.
6. The company raised US$3 million (RM9.6 million) in venture capital and is launching a newly designed platform this week.
7. All posts on Bubblews are public, and anyone may follow a topic tagged with a plus sign.
8. This leads to more transparency and enables users without large groups of friends or followers to participate in conversations on topics ranging from the World Cup to world peace.
9. The site operates in English only, but other languages are in the works. Dixit and Zuccari said about half of those using the beta site are in the United States, with significant participation from Canada, Britain, India, the Philippines and Brazil.

Are you social media addicts ready to earn profits!!??

Here’s how the test unit looks:

They’ve built this feature with privacy in mind, and have taken steps to help make the payment experience safe and secure. None of the credit or debit card information users share with Facebook when completing a transaction will be shared with advertisers and users can select whether or not they’d like to save payment information for future purchases.

The current testing is limited to a few small and medium-sized businesses in the United States.

Facebook generally sees a large amount of conversation around sporting events, but the World Cup has once again proven to be a unique moment. Facebook’s data editors have never measured an event — sports or otherwise — that has topped a billion interactions.

On Saturday, more than 31 million people had 75 million interactions (posts, comments, and likes) related to the match between Brazil and Chile. The nail biter saw the second-highest level of conversation for any World Cup match that Facebook’s data team has measured to date.

Brazil was also playing in the match that saw the highest level of Facebook conversation. 58 million people had more than 140 million interactions for the World Cup opener between Brazil and Croatia on June 12.
Brazilian players are driving Facebook engagement, too. This photo of Neymar and Hulk has over 2.5 Million likes and more than 70K shares, making it the most engaging post by any player during the World Cup:

Of the top 20 most-liked Facebook posts by World Cup athletes during the tournament, a combined 12 of them are by Brazilian teammates Neymar and David Luiz:
Top 20 Facebook player posts with the most likes:

• Neymar – 7
• David Luiz – 5
• Leo Messi – 4
• Cristiano Ronaldo – 3
• Bastian Schweinsteiger – 1

Eleven player posts have more than a million likes:

• Neymar – 7
• Leo Messi – 3
• Cristiano Ronaldo – 1

It’s been a challenging Quarter around for Digital Marketers and Media Buyers at Opus Communication in terms of giving results to our clients, but so far satisfied them all. Most of the people in the Digital Marketing Industry especially Page Admins have known for quite a while, Facebook’s organic reach is becoming more hard to pin down. But a study by Flightpath shows paid reach on Facebook is also getting increasingly expensive.

Flightpath tracked and analyzed the Cost Per Impression (CPM) of three of its major clients, concluding that paid reach has grown from roughly $3 in February to more than $10 in June 2014.

Team at Flightpath elaborates the issue by writing:

“There is always the possibility this decline in paid reach was caused by minor changes in content and scheduling but for the most part we have followed a consistent campaign strategy since implementing promoted posts. It seems highly unlikely that we would see this trend across multiple clients all within the same time frame.

One thing to note is that although paid reach decreased, engagement levels appeared to remain the same.

So what does this mean? It’s hard to say for certain but it could force companies to dish out even more money to reach the same number of fans. In other words, expect the cost of effective promoted posts to rise (especially as more and more brands start to utilize this advertising option).”

We at Opus forecast that brand managers will have to ask their digital marketers to focus on narrowing the targeted audiences on promoted ads, bidding Facebook ads to increase engagement rates and ramping up influencer marketing strategies to see continued success on Facebook.

Here’s a look at the graph showing paid reach over time.

Facebook is now addressing the most asked question at Opus Communication about targeted advertising with a new feature that tells you why the company is displaying the ads you’re seeing. There have also included a mechanism to opt out of such targeting.

Facebook in 2012 introduced their ads publisher which was served up based on the websites you visited. So if you visit Opus Blog for instance you might see a Facebook ad for articles related to Social Media , Digital Marketing Agency etc. However Thursday, June 12, 2014, Facebook began including signals from many different websites. So if you’ve visited Toyota’s, Ford’s and Chevrolet’s websites recently, Facebook might conclude that you’ve interest in the market for a car and show you automated ads related to it.

So if your newsfeed is bombarded with bunch of car ads on Facebook and are wondering why, you can now get an explanation! On the ads there is a prompt asking “Why am I seeing this ad?” Click it and you’ll see Facebook’s rationale 🙂

For consumers who are uncomfortable with such targeting, Facebook has a solution for that: ‘Opt Out’ features on Desktop and Mobile and alter your ad profile. By providing this to avoid targeting, Facebook can deflect criticism that it’s infringing on users’ privacy. However, if consumers do opt out, they will arguably find the ads they see more annoying because they are not relevant to their needs. Hahaha you just cannot stop facebook from displaying them 🙂

Your favorite Social Media watchdog, Opus Communication has something fascinating to share ! Guess which notorious intelligence company has joined Facebook & twitter? It is none other than the ICI !

According to grapevine, the CIA has existed on social media ever since the latter’s conception to uncover global trends and track evil-doers. But it officially joined Twitter and Facebook on Friday!

The agenda of the spy agency is to interact and convey message directly to the public, but its first Twitter message, sent out shortly before 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT), and did not indicate there would be major revelations.

It said simply: “We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.”

The lack of content did not dampen interest: in less than 90 minutes, the CIA account had nearly 84,000 followers, and that number was climbing fast.

Some on Twitter had fun with the announcement:

“@CIA how does it feel to be followed for once?” replied one Twitter user.

The CIA also joined Facebook, as the agency is apparently trying to appear cheerier on the Internet. The CIA’s Facebook page is www.facebook.com/central.intelligence.agency. Its Twitter handle is @CIA.

The Central Intelligence Agency has long had a public website, and it also has official accounts on YouTube and the photo-sharing site Flickr.

“By expanding to these platforms (Facebook and Twitter), CIA will be able to more directly engage with the public and provide information on CIA’s mission, history, and other developments,” CIA Director John Brennan said in a statement.

Some of the items to be posted include artifacts from the CIA’s museum (which is non-public) and updates to “World Factbook,” which covers international leaders, maps and similar such information.

Are you following CIA?  Following or not following the CIA will always have the power to get in our servers and extract any information anytime!

Google’s search update strikes a chord at marketers and consumers that it will get easier for the end user to look for information on the Web. With Facebook’s new feature, the social media giant has taken that realization a step further by allowing its members to share social media content to their personal networks using similar voice-driven technology.

When writing a Facebook status update, users will now have the option to use their cell phone’s microphone to identify what song, movie or show is playing.

However, Facebook users must turn this feature “ON” in order for the technology to work. Once the user has enabled it, Facebook explains the process as such:

“If you’ve turned the feature on, you’ll see an audio icon moving on the screen when you write a status update. If the feature finds a match, you can then choose to add the song, TV show, or movie to your post.”

The same privacy settings apply, making it easy for the users to decide who sees the update. No sound will be stored on Facebook or the device, alleviating the worries of anxious technology users, regarding privacy and copyright issues.

However, when the user share’s what he/she is listening to, their friends will be able to see a 30-second preview of the song. For TV shows, Facebook will identify the exact season and episode, which seems to help avoid spoilers in the News Feed.

This update will help make Facebook more visual as each status improvement brings an additional multimedia social media content format into view. For musicians and TV producers, direct call to action to “download” or at the beginning of every show can spark social media chatter, this will ultimately help marketers quantify the impact of social media marketing in partnership with traditional broadcast channels.