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How To Use Twitter To Support Tourism

May 10, 2011 in Productivity, Twitter with 0 Comments

Falling in Love: How to, Magically, Make Twitter Relevant To Your Business [VIDEO]

March 29, 2011 in Customer Social Engagement, Twitter with 3 Comments

With Twitter already turned five and passing the 200 million open accounts bar, you probably have heard from heavy twitterers, the press and maybe some gurus how easy, convenient and awesome Twitter is to use. No matter, of all the persons I’ve seen trying to pick up the tool for business, many fail to grasp both the necessary process and mindset. Why? By simply failing to listen and care.

Fanajeen

Aassmaa A., a person I advise on social media utilization, returned home to Casablanca, Morocco after a decade lived in San Diego, CA with the idea to transplant the cozy and convenient concept of Californian coffee shops, but with a vintage Arab flair to it. She called it ‘Fanajeen’, the way teacups were called in ancient Arab times. To round up the experience, she chose for her first two locations, the 753,500 square feet (70,000 m2) Morocco Mall in Casablanca. In September 2011, it will be the first mega mall to open in Morocco.

What’s most notable in the way Aassmaa, aka @Fanajeen, picked up on the Twitter and social media essence, is her lightning fast realization after just 10 weeks that the business messages she needed to push out, became magically relevant to her nascent community only when she started really hearing and demonstrating genuine interest and care. This, without needing to feel awkward, clunky or to try and wrap business messages inside hollow sounding and futile niceties, to make them attractive, relevant and impactful. With the comfortable result of being asked to communicate about her business, rather than having to impose it.

Listen and watch Aassmaa, as she candidly tells the story of her love affair with Twitter. For those of you who ‘know the drill’ you might find some interesting nuggets. For those who are still keeping Twitter at bay, viewing it a complex and cumbersome platform, or just simply not seeing a purpose to it; listen and you might discover, as Aassma did, a whole new and unsuspected world to tap into… right in your own backyard!

Most of you reading this most likely have a Facebook account — with its 500+ million users, it is certainly not to be overlooked in any business context — but remember this: if Facebook was TV, Twitter would be a book. Remember your parents and teachers nagging you with some version of: “Read a book! It will make your mind work and imagination better”.

I believe Aassmaa has well earned her ‘@’ sign and I personally believe she did a great job. If you agree, do feel free to let her know at @Fanajeen. [UPDATE: Attaining a 55 Klout score in just 12 weeks is quite an achievement]

Enjoy!

Watch on youtube

How To Get Addicted To Twitter — INFOGRAPHIC

October 15, 2010 in New Media, New World, Twitter with 3 Comments

Any story culminating in a group hug is always great. The path to Twitter ‘addiction’ is one of those stories.

Addiction to Twitter does actually often arrive at a group hug instead of getting caught at customs in a Bangkok airport with a stashed kilo of heroine. Yes, a hug as close to reality as a virtual group hug can get. That’s where Twitter can lead you.

The very talented Roba Al-Assi | @RobaAssi put together an excellent description of each stage leading up to a full on Twitter addiction. You can find the details on Roba’s blog cleverly titled “and far away“.

After watching one of these group hug stories, after the high is gone, do you ever wonder: Nice… Now what?

To be sure, group hugs sessions are fantastic but for a businesses looking to leverage Twitter, those alone will not keep the lights on.

But for those of you, wannabe social businesses, still hesitating to jump on the Twitter bandwagon, you might not be stuck at Roba’s Stage I, but you might be unsure as to what good might these emotional effusions do for your bottom line.

I’m not going to go down the endless list of benefits a well managed Twitter presence can do for businesses here and now, but here’s a hint to munch on: How much probability would a sales call or meeting have to succeed if it had been preceded by a hug?

Now although virtual, I’m not talking about a fake hug. I’m talking about a genuine connection built overtime, based on mutual knowledge of each party and a reach beyond strict business chatting. That’s the opportunity that Twitter is affording us all, regardless of distances, connections or time zones, the ability to virtually invite folks you want to do business with, to sit down and have the equivalent of a nice cup of hot tea, shoot the breeze and break the ice before talking business.

If you had all the time and money in the world, how good of an idea do you think it would be, to invite all your customers and prospects for a one on one chat over a cup of tea? … Now you can and much more.

Question? Post a comment below

Mexico’s Suppressed Find a Voice in Social Media

October 7, 2010 in Social Media Tips with 0 Comments

Violence, media black out and watered down stories due to pressures from drug cartels and dozens of journalists murdered in Mexico; have caused many residents to turn to blogs and social media — such as YouTube and Twitter — for their news.

Front Page "The Epoch Times": http://the epochtimes.com

(Source: The Epoch Times)

Meet Speed, Daughter of King Content and Queen Engagement

October 4, 2010 in Customer Social Engagement, New World, Social Media with 13 Comments

Blogging has won! It wasn’t killed but emboldened, by social media. The latter is alive, well and here to stay as are SEO and search engines: Not a simpler landscape to deal with. So what are businesses looking to use the web for growth to do? Three things: Create even better engaging content, feed it through social networks to engage their communities on it and… make sure that content loads super extra fast on their screen.

The Blog Is Alive! Long Live The Blog

Last week, AOL bought the technology blog TechCrunch for an undisclosed sum (estimated to be at least $25 million) – a blog. The acquisition is a clear example of the once avant-garde company trying to “restore lost relevance” as a Bloomberg article reports.

In a recent WebProNews article, Chris Crum | @CCrum237 elegantly demonstrates the critical importance of blogging along 3 main axis, the first of which even seemingly pointing to the opposite:

Per a Forrester Research report: social content creation is on the decline
Still, content sharing on Facebook and Twitter is not letting up and the number one source of this content: Blogs
Analysis of 1.2 billion tweets revealed that retweets and replies were only occurring for 3 tweets out 10; i.e. over 70% of Twitter content falls on deaf ears

This all points to the death of the still young theory arguing that social media was killing blogging. This theory actually spawned from a low hanging fruit: with the mountains of available content out there, why would anyone continue to blog when sharing any content with thousands now consists of a couple of clicks?

But with the rise of social media, the exact opposite happened. The ever increasing noise levels, far from driving users away, have in effect pent up audiences’ appetite for fresh and relevant content and its main source is — and will remain for the foreseeable future — blogs. It has reestablished the rightful standing of these mines of ideas and creativity.

The demise of the blog’s death has not been an “there can only be one” outcome. Instead, blogging rebirth has participated in better defining the function of social media as a distribution channel, at its most basic level, and as a must have channel for engagement; the life-breathing entity of the very fresh and relevant content that makes up any good blog.

Do we now agree that the blog is alive? Good, now that we all agree, what’s a blog to do to succeed?

Search Is Alive, Well And Social Is The New Back Link

Before the advent of social networks, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was the primary mean by which bloggers could get to and build communities of subscribers. Search is alive, well and here to stay. Its battle is to stay relevant to its users and one way to do so is by incorporating the ever expanding social output. Search engines have already taken a jump on the issue. In early 2010 all three majors, Google, Yahoo and Bing each cut a $25 million check to Twitter for the right to have direct access to their “firehose”. Now, Google is turning to Facebook and its wealth of “like” data. In its search for business relevance as a revenue-generating entity, Facebook does see Google as competition. Google CEO Eric Schidmt recently declaring that, like or not, they will suck Facebook data into their voracious index.

This brings us a few conclusions about Lady Search:

It’s still the life blood online
It’s no longer only about keywords and back links, it also needs to be social to be relevant and thus rank
It’s now incoporating an element often overlooked: speed, web pages loading time type of speed

Why speed? The likes of Google are constantly refining their algorithms not only to make them faster, more comprehensive and relevant to users but also to squash the smarty pants looking to play their system via black hat tricks. This is all the more crucial that we are headed towards the “Internet of Things” — Speed (real-time data); scale (“unprecedented processing power”) and Sensors (“new kinds of data”) — where the volume of available online data is exploding every passing moment. Google VP Marissa Mayer | @marissamayer made a presentation last August at Xerox PARC entitled “The physics of data” and where she reported that in 2002 there were 5 exabytes — that’s 5 billion Gigabytes — of data online, which had risen in 2009 to 281 exabytes or 281 billion Gigabytes. The more data there exists and the more people consume it, the more there will be of it (noise levels notwithstanding) and the faster the means of consumption will need to be.

Tales From “The Coming Data Explosion“

In the real-time web era if everyone can upload anything anywhere anytime and social networks already allow for that content to be super SEO friendly, then there has to be other criteria by which search engines sift through and prioritize mountains of content. This means that now, a site’s position in Google is not only judged by the keywords it contains, the fancy URL it is titled with, the number of back links its home blog boasts or how often it is updated or even how much content it has; it is now also judged by the speed it loads on users screen. This may seem obvious to many but Google only actually officially added speed to their algorithm this past April and if the latest Google enhancement dubbed “Instant” doesn’t convince you, I’m not sure what will.

Many web properties now offer to tell you how fast is your site. Some will boast a unique way to measure, for you to only start suspecting they’re trying to sell you their ‘optimization’ services (WebSiteOptimization) . Other offer scant details that are really of no use in bettering performance. Good resources are mentioned in Google’s official announcement, note the Firefox add-on PageSpeed in particular it provides great details as to how to improve a site (requires Firebug). A couple other have caught my attention that provide as much details as PageSpeed but don’t require messing with add-ons bloating a browser: WebPageTest and Pingdom.To get a quick sense as to your site’s performance run it a few of these tools and several times, it seems results are “moment-dependent”.

Either way it does seem for now that speed optimization is still subject to different “cuisines” with each tool giving slightly different recommendations: Yahoo’s YSlow for example differs from PageSpeed. Still, there are several easy wins most can handle, web-optimizing images is one and just being aware of the change is another.

Which speed measuring tools have you used and found useful?

So How Techie Should Businesses Be?

To the excellent Shannon Paul’s | @ShannonPaul question: “How Techie Should We Be?“, well not as much as necessary to build a whole website but definitely more than before. I believe there’s more “to developing a sustainable social media strategy” than just letting “technology take care of itself”. In the coming “Internet of Things”, devices and features are integral part of the way the communities, from whom we seek engagement, consume content and can sometimes make or break that content’s relevance: Flipboard on an iPhone is irrelevant but is very much à propos on an iPad. Gone are the days when a marketer only needs to remember channels: print, radio, signage and the big — for now still — one way tube, television.

Twitter. Bloqué En Mode Masturbation Mentale?

September 25, 2010 in Conseils Media Sociaux, Engagement Social De Clientèle, Nouveaux Medias, Twitter with 0 Comments

Y a-t-il sur Twitter des personnes actives autre que le groupe homogène ayant les mêmes intérêts et qui semblent se crier les uns sur les autres? Est-ce que ce groupe fait de Twitter l’inverse de ce qu’il devrait être: une plate-forme ouverte et accueillante, où chacun est invité à s’exprimer librement et de la manière qu’il le souhaite.

Cette question m’est venue a l’esprit lors en lisant une réponse à un article que j’avais partagé sur Twitter: “Pour qui bloguez-vous? Vos pairs ou vos clients?”

L’article examinais la cible que le contenu d’un blogueur devais adresser. Lorsque bloguer ou tweeter — Twitter est un micro-blog — est utilisés à des fins marketing, mais ne poursuit que l’approbation de pairs, qu’elle en est la finalité? Vos pairs sont-ils des vos clients? Cela ne fonction pas pour la plupart.

Une autre réponse à ce même tweet, soutient l’hypothèse de Mario: “Je blogue pour mes pairs”. Espérons pour lui que ses pairs, sont ses clients. Mais pour la grande majorité des entreprises visant Twitter comme un canal de promotion, devraient-ils être réellement miser sur Twitter pour commercialiser leurs produits et services? Est-ce que leurs clients sont vraiment sur Twitter?

Seulement 20% Des Abonnés Twitter Sont Actifs

Mario a en partie raison, des 105 millions comptes Twitter en existence, seulement 20% posteraient un tweet au moins une fois par mois. Le reste ne fait soit que lire, s’appuyant sur une fausse croyance qu’ils «n’ont rien à dire», ou sont carrément hors du coup, ayant ouvert un compte — maintenant moribond — soit pendant l’explosion de 2009 de Twitter ou ayant été convaincu par quelque gourou que Twitter été le prochain Eldorado de la richesse et la gloire, seulement pour vite l’oublier.

Twitter Est, A Priori, Le Réseau Social Le Moins Approchable

D’après mon expérience, et malgré son incroyable puissance à transmettre des informations et connecter les personnes, Twitter est pour les novices l’un des réseaux sociaux les plus difficiles à approcher. Vous pouvez presque parier sur les réactions possible à une explication des avantages de Twitter: un accro immédiat ou un rejet plat. Facebook, au-delà de sa taille de mastodonte, est «joli»: beaucoup de photos, des avatars, des films; somme toute une expérience agréable pour ceux qui ne demandent pas plus que de social engagement promener d’un lien vers un autre sans trop d’effort. C’est comme regarder la télévision. En comparaison, Twitter, est comme lire un livre, il faut faire un peu plus d’efforts, mais, dit-on, c’est plus avantageux pour le cerveau. La plupart des gens choisiront toujours la voie facile.

Bon nombre des 20%, sont “tweeps” — comme le jargon Twitter les appelle — anciens du référencement, web design, des médias sociaux ou de toute autre forme de marketing professionnel en ligne. Chacun, souvent vantant aux autres… le prochain killer tool.

Twitter s’est initialement établis parmi les technophiles, ce qui encore dans une large mesure le cas. Toute personne qui tente de démarrer sur Twitter aujourd’hui, quel que soit sont niveau de technophilie, doit rapidement absorber et utiliser un nouveau jargon pour espérer en tirer meilleur parti de Twitter. Les #Hashtags, par exemple, maintenant envahissent la communication journaliere des 20%, mais sont pour le profane un concept qui prend généralement plusieurs analogies a expliquer et un certain temps à adopter.

L’Entreprise Devrait Encore Poursuivre Twitter Comme Canal D’Engagement Social

Ces quelques faits ne devrait certainement pas décourager les entreprises à utiliser Twitter. Les 20% ne sont que la pointe de l’iceberg, ils maintiennent en grande partie le réseaux pour les autres: les lecteurs et les auditeurs. Ceux-ci sont là et arrivent en masse continuellement

* 180 millions de visiteurs uniques mensuels sur Twitter
* 300.000 nouveaux utilisateurs s’inscrivent chaque jour ou plus de 3 par seconde
* Le moteur de recherche Twitter reçoit environ 600 millions de requêtes de recherche par jour

La clé est de les trouver et de les engager.

Les 20% “bavards” devrait seulement sortir un peu leur têtes de leur bulles — ça peut être #intimidant les gars! — regarder autour et travailler un peu plus à faire de Twitter un environnement plus abordable pour les débutants et les non-pairs, de sorte que ceux-ci se sentent moins intimides de participer et de mieux intégrer la plate-forme. Faire croître Twitter d’une manière plus pertinente, nous profitera à tous.

A tous les autres — moins les robots et les comptes spam — ne vous laissez pas intimider par qui que ce soit, vous intimant quoi ou comment le faire. Vous avez beaucoup plus à dire que vous ne pensez et … vous n’êtes certainement pas seul, lisez ce que d’autres personnes disent a ce propos (en anglais):

N’hésitez pas à aller vers eux ou moi-même, @FasTake, pour toutes questions ou conseils à naviguer l’océan fantastique de Twitter.

En tant que non-professionnel, comment utilisez-vous Twitter actuellement? Qu’est-ce qui rendrait l’expérience meilleure pour vous?

Et n’oublier pas de lire aussi pourquoi, dans les médias sociaux, le dicton “Sèmes bien aujourd’hui, et tu récolteras demain” est très applicable.

Is Twitter Stuck In Mental Masturbation Mode?

September 10, 2010 in Customer Social Engagement, New Media, New World, Twitter with 2 Comments

Are there characters on Twitter, other than the most active, homogeneous group with the same interests that seems to be shouting at each other? Is this group making Twitter the opposite of what it should be: an open and inviting platform where everyone is welcome to voice their thoughts in whatever manner they wish. More voices are rising everyday against this matter of fact.

These question came about while reading a reply to an article I shared on Twitter this week: “Who are You Blogging for? Your peers or Your Customers?

The article examined who should a blogger’s content address. When blogging or tweeting — Twitter is a micro-blog — is used for marketing purposes but only pursues peer approval, than what’s the point? Will only peers buy your products? It won’t work for most.

Another reply to the same tweet, supports Mario’s assumption: “I blog for my peers“. Let’s hope for him that his peers, are his customers. But for the vast majority of businesses eying Twitter as promotional tool, should they really be banking on Twitter to market their products and services? Are their customers really on Twitter?

Only 20% of Twitter Users Are Active

Mario is partly correct in that, of the current 105 million twitter accounts, only 20% are reportedly posting a tweet at least once a month. The rest is either just reading, bowing to a wrongly held belief that they “have nothing to say”, or is flat out of it; having opened an account, now on life support, either in the heat of the 2009 explosion of Twitter or were whirlwind by a convert’s “pitch”, that Twitter was the next Eldorado of riches and fame, only to quickly forget about it.

Twitter Is The Least Approachable Social Network… A Priori

In my experience and despite its incredible power in channeling information and connecting people, Twitter is for novices one of the most difficult social networks to approach. You can almost bet on the possible reaction following the explanation of the benefits of Twitter: instant addiction or flat rejection. Facebook, beyond it’s sheer mastodon size, is ‘pretty’: plenty of picture, avatars, movies and all around pleasant experience to anyone looking to idly be taken from a link to another without much effort, it’s like watching TV. In comparison, Twitter is like reading a book, it takes effort but, so they say, is more beneficial to one’s brain. Most people will always choose the easy way.

Many of the 20%, are “tweeps” — as the twitter lingo calls them — hailing from SEO, web design, social media or some other form of online marketing profession. Each one more often than not touting to the next… the next best thing.

Twitter initially took hold with techies and is still to a large extent the case. Anyone trying to get into twitter today, no matter how non techie they might be, must quickly absorb and use a new lingo to hope getting the most out of twitter. #Hashtags, for example, are now bleeding into the mainstream communication of the 20%, but to the lay person are a concept that usually takes a few analogies to grasp and much longer to adopt.

Businesses Should Still Pursue Twitter as Engagement Channel

These matter of facts should certainly not discourage businesses from using Twitter. The 20% are only the tip of the iceberg, driving and feeding the rest: readers and listener. They are out there and more of them are arriving in droves every moment:

180 million unique visitors come to the site every month
300,000 new users are signing up everyday or over 3 per second
Twitter’s search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day

The key is to find and engage them.

The “talkative” 20%er just needs to get their heads out of their bubble — It can be #intimidating y’all! — look around and work to make Twitter a more approachable environment for newbies and non-peers; so they can feel less threatened to participate and make the social network even more mainstream. Making is as such will benefit us all in making Twitter grow in a more relevant manner.

To all the others — minus the bots and spam accounts — don’t be frazzled by anyone telling you what to do or how to do it. You have more to say than you think and… you’re certainly not alone, read from other people battling for y’all:

Feel free to reach out to them or myself @FasTake, for any question or help in navigating the fantastic Twitter ocean.

As a non professional, how do you currently use Twitter? What would make it better for you?

And if you’re so inclined check out why, also in social media if you “Sow Well Today and You Will Reap Tomorrow”

Trop De Temps (Perdu) Sur Facebook? Adoptez La Traque!

September 8, 2010 in Conseils Media Sociaux, La Face du Book with 0 Comments

Avec une nouvelle fonction anticipée, Facebook se remet encore une fois a la ‘twiterization’. Mashable et AllFacebook qualifient la nouvelle de «gigantesque». Bien que la nouvelle fonctionnalité offre des possibilités d’engagement intéressantes, elle n’est en fait pas si nouvelle que ça. Mais penchons-nous sur le “GIGANTISME” d’abord. Le scoop réside en une fonction que Facebook est en train de tester et qui social engagement nomme: “S’abonner”. Notons au passage que cette “nouvelle” appellation est très proche de la version française du “Follow” de Twitter.

Facebook Subscribe Feature

Bientôt, on sera en mesure de «s’abonner» aux activités d’amis Facebook et d’être notifié de chacun de leur faits et mouvements. Si tout ce passe comme prévu, vous verrez sous l’avatar de chacun de vos amis ce petit lien:

Une fois cette option activée, chaque fois que vous irez sur Facebook, vous aurez des notifications sur tout ce que la personne a fait et vous serez en mesure de décrier votre attention a l’heureux élu(ses), de leur faire bien sentir combien vous vous intéressez a eux/elles et combien leur poste est intéressant. Sans compter le petit plaisir malin que certains obtiennent maintenant lorsqu’ils commentent sur un poste dans la minute qui suit sa publication, lorsque, par hasard, ils tombent sur un poste a propos duquel ils auraient quelque chose a dire.

“Hasard” est le mot clé ici, parce que jusqu’à présent avec un flux sans cesse croissant d’amis et de pages “aimées” remplissant votre fil actualités de leurs mises à jour. Seul le hasard nous connecte a la plupart des messages dont on se soucie réellement. Avec un fil d’actualités se ballonnant de plus belle chaque jour, on se demande même combien ont perdu intérêt à même le regarder; s’attendant, comme tant de fois auparavant, à le trouver rempli des mêmes postes de cet ancien camarade de classe, que n’osiez ni quitter, ni cacher.

Facebook Subscribe Notifications (Credit: Mashable)

Plus maintenant, en supposant que vous êtes prêt à avoir une zone de notification bien bourrée, vous pourrez désormais créer votre propre “nichework”, sur lequel vous pourrez vous concentrer et cultiver… ainsi que vos capacités de traqueur d’élite. Est-ce que cette nouvelle fonctionnalité reviendra a passer moins de temps a parcourir sans but votre fil d’actualités Facebook? Est-ce que cela voudra dire un meilleur engagement, plus abondant?

Facebook Subscribe via SMS

La fonctionnalité n’est en effet pas entièrement nouvelle puisque vous pouvez déjà vous inscrire, ou traquer, vos amis en cliquant sur ce lien peu connu “S’abonner via SMS”. Cette action vous permet de recevoir un SMS à propos de tout action initiée par un ami, sauf les “j’aime” ou check-ins. La nouvelle fonctionnalité aura également cette lacune, tel que rapporté par AllFacebook et jusqu’à présent confirmée par une déclaration de Facebook:

«Ce dispositif est testé avec un pourcentage d’utilisateurs. Il permet aux gens de s’abonner à des amis et des pages pour recevoir des notifications lorsque la personne qu’ils ont souscrit aux mises à jour leur statut ou des postes de nouveaux contenus (photos, vidéos, liens, ou des notes).“

Cette nouvelle fonctionnalité est une aubaine pour les entreprises du point de vue engagement, leur permettant de réagir aux activités de leur fans en temps plus opportun, et en particulier si les utilisateurs pourrons aussi s’abonner à leur pages, combien de fois, si jamais, vérifiez votre section “ mises à jour recentes” sur Facebook?

Cette nouveauté modifiera certainement le flux de communication sur Facebook et pourrait le rendre, potentiellement, aussi rapide et volumineux que celui de Twitter. Dans sa quete de concurrencer Google sur leur propre terrain de recherche, n’est-il pas ce dont Facebook a besoin? Cette fonction est très similaire au fait de créer des listes sur Twitter ou de sauvegarder des recherches, avec en prime des notifications permettant une réponse plus rapide et, peut-être, un meilleur engagement.

On assiste effectivement ici a une Twiterization supplémentaire de Facebook puisque la plate-forme de micro-blogging permet des notifications sur:

Credit: TheOatmeal.com

Certaines personnes que vous choisissez par SMS, mais celles-ci sont en général rapidement noyées par les notifications de messages directs, mise en marche automatiquement et qui ne peut être découplée de l’abonnement à certaines personnes
Des mentions de vous-même, si vous utilisez certains clients Twitter tels que Echofone sur un iPhone,via les «notifications»
Les messages directs par SMS, qui est l’équivalent de messages Facebook. Fonction qui devrait être désactivable vue que la plupart de ces messages sont des spam ou des auto-réponses.

Est-ce que ce changement engendrera une expérience plus significative sur Facebook? Ou est-ce que ça veut dire que plus de gens se transformeront en “teignes” et plus seront encore plus mauvais à Facebook?

Que pensez-vous? Comptez-vous utiliser cette fonctionnalité?

Spending Too Much Time on Facebook? Get Stalking!

September 8, 2010 in Customer Social Engagement, Facebook, New Media, Social Media Tips, Twitter with 1 Comment

How likely would you be to start stalking your Facebook friends if it were to save you time and allow for a more meaningful experience on the social network?

So Facebook is twiterizing… again. Mashable and AllFacebook are both calling it “HUGE”. Although the new feature offers some interesting engagement opportunities, it’s actually not that new. But let’s look at the “HUGEness” first. The scoop resides in a test feature Facebook is currently running and dubbing: “Subscribe”. Note they didn’t call it “follow”, it’s got to look genuine.

Soon you’ll be able to ‘subscribe’ to friends activities on Facebook and be notified about every single move they make. If all goes well, you’ll soon be able to see under the avatar of everyone of your friends this little link:

Facebook Subscribe Feature

With this nifty feature, every time you get on Facebook you’ll have notifications about everything the subscribed to person(s) did and you’ll be able to clamor your attention to the chosen one(s), making them feel good about how “interesting” their post was that it prompted you to comment and show how much attention you pay to them by the same token. Notwithstanding the little thrill you do now get when you comment on a post in the minute following its publication when, by pure chance, you ran into a post about which you had something to say from someone you actually care about .

“Chance” is the key word here, because up until now with your ever growing stream of friends and liked pages filling your timeline with their updates. Only Chance could hook you up with posts you actually cared about. With an ever bloating timeline one wonders how many are loosing interest in even looking at it; expecting it as so many times before, to be filled with the same old posts from that childhood classmate you just cannot come to terms with dropping or hiding.

Facebook Subscribe Notifications (Credit: Mashable)

Not anymore, assuming you are willing to have your notification box filled to the breams, you’ll now be able to create your own “nichework”, to hone in on and cultivate as well as your stalking abilities. Will that equte to less time spent aimlessly scanning your Facebook timeline? Will that mean more and better engagement?

Facebook Subscribe via SMS

The feature is in effect not entirely new since you can already subscribe to, or stalk, friends by clicking this little known link title “subscribe via SMS”. This action gets you an SMS about everything a friend initiates; i.e. will not notify of likes or check-in, as the new feature won’t either as reported by AllFacebook and so far confirmed by a Facebook statement to them:

“This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they’ve subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links, or notes).”

The new feature would be a boon for businesses from an engagement standpoint allowing them to react to their fans activity in a timely fashion, and in particular if users can also subscribe to activities of pages; how often do you, if ever, check your “updates” section on Facebook?

This will certainly modify the flow of communication on Facebook and make it closer in speed, and potentially in volume, to Twitter’s. Isn’t that what Facebook is looking for? It is very similar to creating Twitter lists or saving searches but with the added bonus of notifications allowing for a faster response and maybe better engagement.

This indeed constitues further Twiterization of Facebook since the micro-blogging platform allows notifications about: