April 26th, 2011
Facebook Launches the SEND Button
A year after relaunching the “Become a Fan” button as the famous LIKE button, Facebook recently launched the “Send” button that aims to enhance the functionality of Group pages and will replace the option of the “email to a friend” button. As we enter the age of social business, Facebook’s latest open graph tool aims to enhance web sites just like how the LIKE button was integrated to over 2.5 million sites. With the Send button, it will enable anyone to share content from the Internet with certain sets of people.
To quote Facebook:
The Send button is a social plugin that websites can use to let people send a link to a friend through Facebook Messages, post it to a Group, or email it to an individual. For example, if you see a Mother’s Day gift idea on 1-800-Flowers.com, you can now send a message or email to your family members to discuss. Or say you’re training for a marathon and you come across a great article about running shoes on The Huffington Post. Now you can share it with your entire running group in just one click.
The Send button will not compete with the LIKE button at all. The Send button has a distinct functionality that will further enhance the value of consumer content. It’s similar to the LIKE button in a way because it’ll let users broadcast information that will appear on their feeds. However, the Send button puts a premium on privacy; the Send button gives users the option of private sharing. If you take a closer look, it’s like a segmented approach to the LIKE button. Users can now choose Groups from their network to send specific information to using the Send button.
The Send button is a very versatile social plugin due to the fact that it can be sent via Facebook message, email, or posted right into a specific Facebook Group’s wall. It paves the way for more private social-sharing. How businesses will utilize the Send button remains to be seen. But one thing’s for sure, expect that the Send button will follow the success of last year’s LIKE button.
April 21st, 2011
Google Launches New Google Analytics
Google launched its new version of Google Analytics yesterday which packs a handful of functionalities. The new and “improved” Google Analytics is now enhanced with a streamlined user interface coupled with quicker performance. Google Analytics users can now create multiple dashboards with up to 20 per user. Each dashboard can carry up to a dozen widgets. The most notable functionality is setting the interaction goals, graph, and compare specific metrics over time then toggle between multiple profiles and sites while focusing on a single report.
Users can still use the old version but Trevor Claiborne of the Google Analytics team is welcoming substantial comments and suggestions from simple users to SEO specialists. While you can still use either version, Claiborne mentioned that Google Analytics v5 is still being tweaked in order to improve user experience which means there are still a few bugs on the new version.
Additional features will be gradually rolled out, useful functions such as exporting reports to PDF, emailing reports, migrating reports from old version to new Google Analytics, linking new AdWords and Adsense accounts to Analytics, email scheduling, and In-Page Analytics. We’re also curious how Google’s recent product , +1, will complement this new version of Google Analytics. As the Web becomes more social and many businesses leveraging social media, Google’s +1 should be playing a crucial role in future and improved versions of Google Analytics.
