Facebook Working to Create the Ultimate User Experience

In the face of this extreme growth and popularity, something they’re doing must be working.

On one hand, there is the advertising capabilities on Facebook.com. Our CEO, Harry Gold, very nicely summarized the advertising opportunities on Facebook in his recent ClickZ article, which you can read at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3630553?page=3630553.

The newest addition to this list, according to Mark Walsh of MediaPost, is called Engagement Ads. Engagement ads, currently in testing, are focused on increasing click-throughs in the social space. Like the typical Social Ads on Facebook, Engagement Ads feature a headline, body copy and an image or video. Unlike the Social Ads, however, Engagement Ads allow people to post and read comments, see other fans of the page that is being promoted via the ad, and share virtual items (Facebook gifts) that the brand has released with friends - all within the ad unit. These ads also appear to the right of the News Feed, unlike Social Ads which actually appear in the News Feed. Currently, these ads are in Beta testing, with a select few advertisers being able to utilize them for testing. See the image below of a current Engagement Ad.

This new ad unit is further propagating the feeling that Facebook is genuinely concerned with social networking at its core. With the rollout of Engagement Ads, Facebook users will not only be able to engage in the social conversation with one another, but they will also be able to more easily engage in this conversation with brands and marketers. With the sense that this is “opt-in”, since a user can choose whether or not to engage with the ad, this new form of social advertising represents a significant opportunity for marketers interested in engaging their brand with users in the social space.

Another recent addition to Facebook, which is both helping to grow Facebook’s own community as well as increase marketing opportunities, is the development of the Widget. In fact, the Engagement Ad platform is essentially using Widgets as ads. A Widget, also known as a Gadget, is a dynamic, rich-media ad unit that can be placed on blogs, websites, or computer desktops, and can be “shared” from one user to others within the ad unit itself. Widgets are increasingly growing as a marketing device, especially for movies and TV shows, since these ads can contain video, interactive content, streaming RSS feeds, and quite a bit of other functionality that really leaves the door wide open for marketers to entice users into the Widget, and then providing users with new, innovative, relevant and useful functionality for interaction.

Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst At Forrester Research, recently said, “Brands will only succeed with these 'WidgetAds' if they create content that puts community first, lean on new interactions, integrate with other tools, plan for the long haul, and change how they measure success--traditional Internet advertising tactics won't apply," in a post on his blog about the Facebook Engagement Ads.

Even aside from the Engagement Ads, Facebook is increasing its use of Widgets in other areas. Whereas previously, Facebook allowed users to add user-generated Widgets to individual pages; now, Facebook has developed a number of Desktop Widgets for its own applications, to make the overall Facebook user experience stronger. See the snapshot of some of the most active Facebook Desktop Widgets below.

For example, Facebook Exporter for iPhoto allows seamless integration between iPhoto, where a user likely stores all of his/her photo content, to Facebook, where this user can share his/her photos with friends and other users. This and other applications like it are one way of Facebook internally promoting itself, by developing external applications to drive users to use the site often. Also, this functionality opens the door to marketers being able not only to create a Widget for Facebook, but this same Widget could be applied to a user’s desktop, and to multitudes of other locations, putting the brand right out there and accessible to users wherever they prefer.


Overall, with its increasing growth in both users and features, Facebook is really growing as a strong and influential social networking platform. It is becoming increasingly quite useful and powerful to marketers looking to promote brands in the social space, and provide the best possible user experience.

To check out the most recent updates on Facebook, visit the Facebook Blog.

Labels: Facebook, Social Media