Facebook Changed How Links Are Displayed — This is bigger than you think

While most of the industry has been focused on Facebook’s new Graph Search, a quiet and new change to Facebook has taken place. Facebook has expanded the size of the thumbnail images for Links.

At first, this appears to be a small and seemingly unimportant change.

Don’t be fooled by it’s size, it’s a bigger deal than you may think.

We know that Facebook does extensive tests, examining different variables, and how it impacts bottom line usage of the site.

We also know that Facebook is in a continual effort to drive traffic and engagement. Facebook is reportedly attempting to allow users to discover more great content from the news feed, especially from links within the news feed.

Why Is This Important?

From an EdgeRank perspective, this is in important. Photos have become the go-to engagement driver in the news feed.

Typically, photos are more “fun” and more in line with what consumers chose to engage with. However, this has created an ecosystem of memes and irrelevant Page content.

Page’s are posting photos, just to post photos. I’ve spoken with some of the largest and most successful brands on Facebook and many of them have a photo only policy. If Facebook wants to mature, and not become a meme graveyard reminiscent of the current Reddit, they need to figure out a way to cut back on these memes and irrelevant photos in the news feed.

Making links more visually attractive can be one step toward that endgame.

The Game Of Engagement

Facebook analyzes the news feed continually to improve engagement.

Photos dominate engagement, but I’ve been sitting on a theory for sometime with an alternative reason for photos receiving above average engagement. Increased average engagement on photos could be the result of more visual real estate in the news feed. This could be a classic example of correlation, not causation (that photos achieve more engagement due to their content type, as opposed to their screen real estate). It is very difficult the separate the two, and it’s hard to know if Facebook has actually done the research.

The new format takes up roughly 33% more space than the original Link:

Will this cause an increase in engagement by 33%?

My guess is not quite, but I am expecting an increase in engagement for the Link content type.

Brands that heavily post links should be excited for this new change, as Facebook may have just handed you an increase in your engagement.

This should also serve as a reminder to make sure all of your brand’s content has high quality images to be used in the news feed. If people are going to take the time to link to it, make sure it encourages clicks.

Shah Rukh Khan Ranked First in Inaugural Forbes India Celebrity 100 List

Shah Rukh Khan, the Bollywood superstar topped the inaugural Forbes India Celebrity 100 list. The ranking was given based on the popularity as well as income of the biggest entertainers of India. Second on the list was Salman Khan and MS Dhoni followed in the third position. 

The special edition of Forbes India judged in eight different categories, i.e., directors, film actors, TV personailities, models, comedians, sports stars, authors and singers/musicians. Even though Salman Khan and MS Dhoni were ahead in the ranking in terms of popularity, in comparison to SRK, but the Bollywood King ranked high because of his earning, most of which came from the brand endorsements. 

According to the Forbes India estimates, the total earning of SRK from October 2011 and September 2012 was 202.8 crore Rupees. In comparison to SRK’s, Salman’s earning was 144.2 crore Rupees, while that of Dhoni was 135.16 crore. 
In the list of top 10 celebrities were Akshay Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar, Kareena Kapoor, Virender Sehwag, Virat Kohli and Katrina Kaif. 

The list prepared by Forbes India meant to rank most powerful Indians in media as well as entertainment sector. After collecting data, the raning was given based on income of the celebrities which came from business of the entertainment sector as well as the fame which was measured in terms of online presence, media mentions and social media follower. 

Among the sportspersons, MS Dhoni, the captain of India cricket team grabbed the top most position. In the category of singer/musicians, AR Rahman led the pack. Malaika Arora Khan was declared as the leading TV personality. On the other hand, Karan Johar was listed as the most powerful director. In other categories were comedian Vir Das, model Esha Gupta and author Chetan Bhagat. The youngest celebrity in the list of Forbes India was Saina Nehwal, aged 23 years.

Has Apple finally lost its shine?

Some years ago Apple decided to change its name. In its innovative early years (when it made computers like the Apple II, Lisa and the original Macintosh..if your old enough to remember!) it was known as Apple Computer, Inc. Then it decided to change its name to just Apple Inc. A sign of the times, instead of focusing on making desirable, but expensive hardware it ventured into more ‘consumer related, mass market products’. Enter the iPod, the iPhone and now the iPad.

Yesterday it was announced that Apple had lost a whopping $50bn wiped of its share price. An astonishing amount of money, even for a top fortune 500 company like Apple. We have become used to Apple year on year beating last year’s expectations on profits, devices sold and  new ‘Apple stores’ opening up in major towns around the UK and abroad. But is this a turning point for Apple’s fortunes? Why has this happened and why are so many     shareholders and suppliers to Apple in Asia and elsewhere starting to worry?

Apple was innovative, turning its face on the drab Microsoft 2-dimensional world of MS-DOS and under the genius that was Steve Jobs and partner Steve Wozniak produced the first GUI long before others knew that Windows’ was nothing more than what you looked through. Apple has innovated to a point but now sadly has stagnated. Fact.

Since the sad death of Steve Jobs in 2011 to cancer, I believe Apple has failed to innovate and just seems happy in reproducing slightly better models than the model before, such as the iPhone 4 and 4S. Most of the improvement on later Apple models is down to not direct innovation by Apple, but more of advances in silicon technology, such as the Samsung chip used in them! The fact is that other companies have caught up with the early lead that Apple’s innovation originally created, some, such asSamsung with the Galaxy S3 are even surpassing Apple and iOS with the hugely popular Androidplatform.

What has made matters worse for Apple is that they have been heavily been reliant on the component manufacturers, such as arch rival Samsung who fabricate the A6 processor. The recent law suits between the two giants has damaged Apple especially, having lost appeals on copyright and user interface designs. To be honest it’s not just Samsung that has hit Apple hard, it’s the fact that the market is saturated with phones, why should someone upgrade from a perfectly good iPhone 4S to an iPhone 5 for just a bit taller screen? Okay its 4G, can you get that in your area?

What Apple needs is to innovate again. Concentrate on producing truly unique products that beat the mainstream, this is what Steve Job’s philosophy always was. Apple has become a stagnant monolith run by accountants, marketing managers and so forth. It needs inspirational engineers again that think out of the box and create truly inspirational products that users want. Finally, get shot of the current CEO of Apple, Tim Cook. Sure he is a nice guy and clever too, but he’s an opp’s manager, not an engineer, visionary or may I say it, a dreamer.

As the famous 1997 Apple poster campaign had as its strap line, this is what it needs to do again –THINK DIFFERENT!