Friday Social Round Up: Facebook Time Line for Business Pages, Raspberry Pi and Condom Check-ins

Facebook time line comes to pages

As you will know by now, Facebook announced time line for brand pages on 29 February. All pages will switch over to the new design on 30 March, giving page admins’ a month to edit their pages. All pages will have the shinny and stylish cover photo, which will help bring brand identity and individuality to each page, but if you were eyeing it up as a prime bit of marketing real estate, think again. Facebook guidelines prevent pages from using their cover photo to display:

• Price or purchase information;
• Contact information;
• References to user interface elements i.e. Like or Share;
• Calls to action such as ‘Get it Now.’

The new design also has a few new features; fans are now able to private message brands with queries and brands can respond, but the pages cannot initiate private messages. Brands can also ‘pin’ posts to the top of the page for up to seven days, which is a simple but very useful new feature.

So far this all sounds great, but along with the new design and its cool features, comes the responsibility of a possible historical clean up. How sure are you that every post from your page’s past represents your company’s image?

On the plus side, the time line design allows brands to go back and add Milestones – this could be anything from a TV ad that the company had or the opening of a new store. This could reveal an interesting story or new information about the brand that fans where previously unaware of.

Are you ready for time line? Fresh Egg has published a free e-bookto help you get your head around these changes.

Raspberry Pi

Sounds delicious doesn’t it? No it’s not a typo; I am talking about the credit-card sized computer. The miniature device, which costs just £22, sold out worldwide only two hours after going on sale. Tech fans eager to get their hands on the device also crashed the main distributors’ websites.

So what is all the fuss about? The Raspberry Pi was developed in the UK by designers who hoped the unique device would help develop programming skills across computer users.

The Linux based computer is unlike any other on the market, the Raspberry Pi is sold without a screen, mouse or keyboard, in reality it is actually a circuit board, which can be plugged into a TV. The developers hope that users will begin to write software for the gadget.

Condoms with QR codes

Planned Parenthood has started an interesting social media campaign to mark National Condom Week.

55,000 condoms were distributed throughout western Washington with QR codes in the packets. When scanned on a Smartphone, users are taken to mobile website Where Did You Wear it, where they can check-in their safe sex activity. The website is intended to promote safe sex.

Facebook Black Ops enforcement

A funny video about peoples’ reluctance to change over to Timeline:

Infographic time

According to the Criminal Justice Degrees Guide the UK has seen a 540 per cent increase in Facebook related crimes in the past three years. As we have seen over the last year social sites can be used for both committing a crime and solving one.