Facebook Marketing for Microsoft Partners: A Primer
August 1, 2011 by admin
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Facebook Marketing for Microsoft Partners: A Primer
New functionality additions in the social networking tool mean creative Microsoft partners have more ways than ever to get the word out about the great things their companies are doing.
With the rollout of Facebook’s new makeover this spring a fait accompli, many Web-savvy businesses are rejoicing that some of the service’s new features will make it much easier for them to market on the social network — both creatively, and from a business analytics perspective.
Millions of Facebook users have been watching the latest evolution of the service — which includes a new look and feel for everyone who has a Facebook account — metamorphize across the network since late 2010.
“If you look at Facebook’s growth you can see that by 2012 about half of the U.S. and a big chunk of the global population will be using Facebook once a month,” says Simon Solotko, a senior advanced marketing manager at chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. “That’s a tipping point in terms of the scope and influence in social connectivity of people everywhere.”
One of Facebook’s most anticipated marketing changes is the network’s new ability to easily add framed content to a Facebook page — technically known as content presented within iFrames. Essentially, the change enables any business to easily mirror the Web design on its Web site on a Facebook page — as long as it’s within an iFrame.
Scores of Web designers are celebrating the move, because attempting to duplicate the look and feel of a company’s Web site pages on Facebook had previously presented quite a challenge in many cases.
Moreover, Web marketers say the introduction of easy iFraming also makes it much simpler for a business to crunch visitor analytics, including tracking visitor activity on Facebook pages, and thoroughly analyzing how sales and other sought-after conversions unfold on a Facebook page.
One caveat: If you or your Web designer plans to take advantage of iFrames on Facebook, be sure that you protect such content from would-be computer hackers, who can compromise iFramed Web pages if those pages are not secured properly.
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, has grown the social networking site to more than 750 million registered users.
“Good programming and updates [to all the software you're using] are key to protecting this kind of content,” says Catalin Cosoi, head of BitDefender Online Threat Labs, a division of the BitDefender Web security firm. “Actually, this means applying strong security policies to all of the company’s Web pages, including those on Facebook.”
All told, the Facebook makeover has stimulated marketers to update their best marketing practices for the service in myriad ways. Here are some of the most popular:
Understand Why Facebook Is So Powerful
While social networking has been around for a while — people were socializing on Web forums long before Mark Zuckerberg got his first tricycle — Facebook was one of the services that made such networking so effortless, so fun and so multifaceted.
For example, once someone signs up for your “fan” or business page on Facebook, they immediately begin getting info about your business in their News Feed, can instantly share your offers to others in their social network, can effortlessly engage in discussions on your Facebook page, can give their opinion about your products or services and can shop on your Facebook page — all of which is extremely intuitively. Small wonder Facebook now has 750 million-plus registered users, and growing.
Moreover, Facebook represents a chance for marketers to reach out to an audience that’s often pre-qualified, and often already extremely interested in what a company has to say.
“Facebook is a place where there’s self selection,” says Lisa Dreher, vice president of marketing and business development at Logicalis Group. “People choose what organizations they will befriend. That’s unique in marketing. As in most cases, we’re putting messages in front of people whether they want to see them or not.” Now with social media, the people are choosing what they want to hear about. “It means your audience is highly qualified — presuming you’re doing the right things to get the right people there in the first place,” Dreher says.
Get Creative with Facebook’s Newly Unshackled Web Design Features
For years, Web designers have bemoaned the fact that they were forced to use Facebook’s propriety programming for much of the designing they did on the Facebook site. No more. With the rollout of Facebook’s latest makeover, the service is now offering Web designers complete creative design freedom within specified framed areas of company pages on Facebook.
“I, for one, am thrilled with this long-awaited news,” says Janet Driscoll Miller, CEO of SearchMojo, a Web marketing firm. Essentially, any content that appears within these specially designed iFrames is no longer subject to the limitations of Facebook’s design format. Instead, the content can be easily designed with more robust Web design programs like DreamWeaver or Microsoft Expression.
“This is a huge timesaver when you’re trying to program pages to match your corporate brand,” Miller adds.
[Click on image for larger view.] Figure 1. Company Facebook pages no longer need to all look like a running list of status updates. While customized pages were possible before, a new approach called iFrames allows developers to reject Facebook’s proprietary programming and create pages with familiar tools such as DreamWeaver or Microsoft Expression.
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Facebook launches security bug bounty program
August 1, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Facebook has launched a program for compensating security researchers that discover vulnerabilities in the website’s code. To cash in, hackers must sign up at Facebook’s new whitehat hacking portal, called Information for Security Researchers, over at facebook.com/whitehat and report the issues directly to Facebook’s security team.
Facebook offers a base payment of $500 (one bounty per security bug) but says it is willing to pay more if the discovered flaw is a major one. The company says this new program is one of the ways it shows appreciation to the security researchers who help it keep the service safe and secure for everyone. It is allowing security researchers to create test accounts on Facebook in a way that doesn’t violate the website’s terms of use and doesn’t impact other Facebook users.
In order to qualify for a bounty, Facebook says that hackers must:
- Adhere to its Responsible Disclosure Policy by giving the company a reasonable time to respond to a report before making any information public and make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data, and interruption or degradation of the service during research
- Be the first person to responsibly disclose the bug
- Report a bug that could compromise the integrity or privacy of Facebook user data, such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF/XSRF), and Remote Code Injection
- Reside in a country not under any current US Sanctions (such as North Korea, Libya, Cuba, and so on)
Previously, Facebook has focused on simple recognition by putting the security researcher’s name on its security page under a list of White Hats (at the time of writing, there were 42 individuals listed). The company also often sent them Facebook merchandise, and even offered jobs based on their disclosures or their security work elsewhere (infamous hacker Geohot was hired three months ago). Now the portal has been upgraded so that security researchers can sign up, log in, and report bugs.
That being said, there are some exceptions that Facebook lists right off the bat:
- Security bugs in third-party applications
- Security bugs in third-party websites that integrate with Facebook
- Security bugs in Facebook’s corporate infrastructure
- Denial of Service Vulnerabilities
- Spam or Social Engineering techniques
Since Facebook has more than 750 million users, vulnerabilities can potentially affect a huge number of people. As a result, this security bug bounty program, while not new (Mozilla and Google offer one as well), help hackers make a positive impact on the website.