Facebook Working On #Hashtags!

March 15, 2013 By Abhishek Prakash Leave a Comment

There was a time when Facebook and Twitter were two separate entities in social media world. Facebook, the personal space to share with friend and family while Twitter was the domain for real-time ‘news’ and discussion along with the opportunity to follow celebrities. As the world rely more and more on mobile devices for internet access, the two social media giants starts rubbing shoulders with each other to get bigger piece of mobile advertisement pie.

The #rumour has it:

According to WSJ, Facebook is now working on a hashtag feature similar to Twitter. People who do not know, hashtag is sort of highlighter in tweets where you can put emphasis on a particular word by placing a ‘#’ before it. This also allows users to use it as a tag to search in real-time for all the tweets containing this hashtag. You can think of these hashtags as a ‘keyword search’.

Google Plus has also incorporated the hashtag feature even since its beginning. Facebook has been avoiding it for long. But the introduction of Graph Search has shown that Facebook has few arrows (even if borrowed from somewhere else) in its quiver. Facebook has announced that it will start including statuses and posts as well in the Graph Search. Keeping that in mind, it is quite viable that Facebook will start including hashtags for keyword specific Graph Search.

What’s the fuss?

It’s all about moolah. By means of hashtags, Twitter provides a real good way to see the tweets in real-time and thus gets advertisers more focused on advertising on current/real-time moments. Also, as hashtags emphasize on certain keywords, it will help in a more accurate targeting for advertising.

Facebook has been copying Twitter features for a long time

It;s not the first time that Facebook has copied something from Twitter. Facebook started copying Twitter’s feature around two years back when it introduced the feature of “subscribe” on the line of ‘follow’ of Twitter. Later Gradually it also introduced the feature of tagging anyone (person or page) in comments and status by using ‘@’ before the name. Twitter users know very well the use of ‘@’ to ‘mention’ (read, tag) anyone in a tweet.

I have felt the need of hashtags for a long time. The news of Facebook hashtags is a welcome sign. Though it won’t be coming any time soon, it still is a positive change. By the way that makes me thinking if hashtags were first used by Apple instead of Twitter, how many lawsuits would have we seen?

How To Get The New Facebook News Feed

March 8, 2013 By Abhishek Prakash Leave a Comment

Facebook has changed the look of its news feed (your Facebook home page) again. And we’ll see how to get the new Facebook news feed. But first lets talk about the changes. It is one of the major changes in Facebook after the Graph Search. The motto behind the new redesign of news feed is to make it less clutter and more organized with more relevant content.

At first look, the new look in the mobile version is clearly inspired by (hold your breath) Google Plus. Facebook has copied several features of Google Plus ever since Google Plus is released. Privacy policy, circles, tagging are few to name. But it is also true on the other way round. Google Plus too has taken inspirations from Facebook.

Not going in to the game of who-copied-from-whom, lets see what are the features of new Facebook News Feed:

Bigger photos
Quick access to all of the feeds
A unified look across the web and mobile
Less cluttered, more organized

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How to get the new Facebook news feed:

As of now the new Facebook news feed is available to a few people only and it is still in beta mode. But you can always request an invite. Go to https:// and scroll down to the bottom. Look for the “Join Waiting List” button and click on it to get the beta invite.

To get the invite earlier, change the default Facebook language to English US. The same trick work in case if you are looking for how to get Facebook Graph Search. How do you like the new Facebook news feed? Do share it with us.

Facebook To Replace Your VoIP Provider? May Be In Near Future!

February 23, 2013 By Abhishek Prakash Leave a Comment

Facebook has been experimenting a lot lately. A multi-billions dollar company should not be content with what it has, should it? Last month Facebook started the voice messaging for its iOS Messenger app. Today it has brought voice calling option in its main iOS app. Now users in US and Canada have option to call their online Facebook friends in the main Facebook app.

What is this voice call?

You can see this option when you tap on a friend’s name. If he/she is online, you can do a voice chat from your phone by clicking on the “free call” button. Of course it will cost you more data charges. No, you cannot call a friend on his/her phone number if he/she is online. At least not now. When a user is not online, the “free call” option is greyed out.

Facebook Voice Calling — Pic courtesy: TechCrunch

Bah! Sounds more like Skype and Gtalk

Yes! This was my first reaction as well. What’s the big deal. Skype and Gtalk already has this option where you can voice as well as video chat with online users. With Skype, you can also call on a friend’s phone number (using Skype credits) if he/she is not online. So what’s the fuzz about Facebook providing voice calling option?

Tip of the Zucker…oops…iceberg!

Look at the bigger picture. It could be just the tip of the iceberg. Facebook may be (and it should be) planning to roll out complete voice and video chat option in its mobile app. VoIP is a growing industry and $8 Bn selling price of Skype is a confirmation. Facebook is a social network with over a 1 billion people worldwide. It is the de facto standard in social media industry.

With the rise of smartphones, a huge population has their contacts synced with Facebook. What do you see here? An immense opportunity to utilize them for a VoIP project. After all if you have calling options straight in Facebook, why would you go and search for the same friend in Skype or Gtalk?

With its messenger service for SMS it already has reduced the phone bills for many. And with the calling option, it surely is going to reduce it further. What is your opinion on it? Will it be a hit or a miss?

How To Get Rid Of Facebook Graph Search

February 19, 2013 By Abhishek Prakash 8 Comments

Ever since Facebook launched Graph Search, many of us were curious to get our hands on it. This is why I wrote a small tutorial on how to get Facebook graph search. But it seems that Facebook Graph Search is not that great and to an extent useless. Moreover, when you use the graph search, it removes all the home icon, notification, friend request, messages etc on the right side of the screen. Most of us are used to of refreshing the news feed by clicking on the home button. But with the new design, you might end up clicking on the search area. Quite a frustration.

I present you a neat little trick to disable Facebook Graph Search for now. This trick will work till the date Facebook forces users to use graph search similar to what it did with timeline.

How to remove Facebook Graph Search:

Step 1:

Go to your account settings:

Step 2:

If you are using Facebook graph search now, it means that your Facebook language is English US. To get rid of graph search, change the language to English UK.

That’s it. When you go back to your home screen, you will see everything back to normal. Question, suggestions?? Feel free to drop a comment.

How To Get Facebook Graph Search

January 22, 2013 By Abhishek Prakash 5 Comments

If you are an active follower of Social Media news, you must be aware of this new tool Facebook is launching: Graph Search. Facebook Graph Search is a new search tool from Facebook that lets you do personalized search queries in your Facebook friend network. Confused? The video below will be helpful in clearing the air:

So in a nutshell, unlike a web search, Graph Search will search among your Facebook connection and network to answer your search queries.

How To Get Facebook Graph Search:

Facebook Graph Search is out in beta. Which means it is not available to everyone. But no need to get disheartened. You can apply for a beta invite and can use it before your friends. Follow the steps below to get Facebook Graph Search beta invite:

Go to the following link:
Scroll down till the end.
You will see a notice: Try Graph Search Beta. Click on the Join Waiting List.

Tip:

As you might have noticed that it says that Facebook Graph Search is available for a limited English (US) audiences. To ensure a quick invite, change your Facebook language and the language you speak in your profile to English (US).

Enjoy Facebook Graph Search

Facebook Graph Search: What Does It Mean To You

January 22, 2013 By Medha BN 2 Comments

Back to the roots, Facebook’s Graph Search it is.

Facebook as it was first launched, was used by people to browse and learn about people and end up making new connections. Here it is back again rediscovering its roots through search again, this time its called “Graph Search”.

What is Facebook graph Search?

Graph Search is a way for you to search and find people, photos, places and interests that are relevant to your search and your relationship with your friends on Facebook.

Graph search is not same as the web search. It is mainly the search for content on Facebook which will give unique search results for each one depending on strength of relationship and connections.
It’s in beta and available to small number of Facebook users in US. However, if you like to get it you can register to the waiting lists here

Why use Graph Search?

It’s easy and better because you don’t have to search individual friend’s profiles for information. You can get all the results for your search on latest happenings with your connections in one place.

You can search for photos, places, interests and people.
You can easily discover new people with similar interests and make new connections.
You can find places, restaurants and other local attractions based on your friends’ feeds, likes and shares including information from their history.
you can even get all the results about your friends’ favorite music bands, books or movies.
As an example, according to this report, you could even use this new feature for dating or recruiting as well.
For an average user this might not be a great hit, but businesses and leaders could definitely make use of it.

How is graph search different from web search?

Graph search was first rumored to be a competition to the king of internet the Google. But stop believing such rumors, it’s a completely different thing and in no way similar to the existing web search. Here are few things that make graph search different from web search.

Web search:

Keywords oriented
Provides links that could contain answers for your search
Mostly information that is available to the public on the web

Graph search:

You combine phrases and not keywords
You are provided with results rather than links
It is more private and you will be able to see the results in your search that you are able to see elsewhere on Facebook

Could this feature have any disadvantages?

As written on Gizmodo, you have every chance of being seen for all the wrong reasons on Facebook! All thanks to graph search.

You may have liked pages, status or photos in the past that may become the cause for embarrassment today on being seen on somebody’s search results under the wrong search phrases. Your likes may be due to the awesome content of the page or status but the literal meaning of them could ruin your Facebook reputation especially among your friends if you were ever caught for wrong search!
Your privacy may be at stake! May be, because the for graph search is not clear and at present its just waggly defined. Your private life on Facebook could be public in a moment of time if you do not pay close attention to what you share or like on Facebook and with whom? As a matter of fact, you may now want to look back into your profile for the history so you do not repent for it later.
Above all, the real benefits of this graph search itself is questionable? Why do you want to search this extensively and keep a watch on the database of friends in the first place? Is this whole thing of graph search required? An extensive research has been articulated on Techcrunch about why graph search is a miss? Only time and Mark Zuckarberg can answer I guess!

On the other hand, as a user, we may have to work hard for this graph search to become hit which is now far away from the success it claims to have one day. We may have to become more active check-in often, keep liking and updating status and also not just add photos but meticulously tag them to be found on search results (only if you like it to happen!).

The attempt of adding this feature in to encourage users to get more active or should I say proactive on this social networking site. It is an attempt to encourage people to grow their friends circle and add more and more friends quickly as the stats show the drop in expanding number of friends on an average which is crucial for Facebook’s growth in future.

Do you think graph search is really an essential user tool?

How To Download Facebook Photos To Android Phone

January 8, 2013 By Abhishek Prakash 1 Comment

Facebook is a wonderful website that connects you with your loved ones and the world. More often than not, you come across some very interesting picture, image or photo on Facebook, that you wish to save or store with you. Downloading a photo from Facebook while using computer is very easy. There is always option of downloading it or “save the image” but it is not that straight forward when you are using Facebook on mobile.

As most of us have started using smart phones to access internet, we spend more time browsing Facebook through mobile than the computer. And here comes the problem. Suppose you come up with an amazing photo on Facebook which you would like to save or share on your own page. But, the official Facebook app for android smart phones does not give you the option of downloading it. So what can be done?

Lets see in this tutorial how to download Facebook photos to android phone. Remember we cannot use official Facebook app for this purpose.