Facebook tests subscribe button for pages to make it easier for users to receive updates without clicking Like

Some Facebook users are seeing a subscribe button on business pages that allows them to receive News Feed updates from a page without indicating that they “Like” it.

Facebook confirmed that it was testing the feature, which was first reported by Marketing Land. This seems to be an extension of the interest lists feature the social network launched in March. After rolling out Timeline for pages, Facebook began giving users the option to add pages to an interest list to subscribe to content without Liking the page. However, the feature is hidden in a drop down menu so it is unlikely that many users knew about it. If Facebook expands its test with the subscribe button, more users might be more likely to connect with pages this way and perhaps organize them into lists. Users can view interest lists as a separate feed or see summaries of content in News Feed.

Here is a screenshot of the new feature from Marketing Land reader Craig Smith:

We do not have the button on our own accounts, but here is the way to connect with a page without clicking Like:

We’ve previously questioned how ads will be targeted depending whether a user Likes a page or subscribes to it. We’ve also pointed out the problem that Facebook pages don’t get any information about how many users subscribe to their content through this button or interest lists.

Facebook introduced subscribe for personal accounts in September 2011 to allow users to allow for asymmetric relationships between users.

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FanRx brings Spotify play button to Facebook tab apps

Social media software company FanRx today added an option for artists to embed their songs from Spotify on Facebook tab applications using the company’s free Facebook Page Builder.

This feature is possible as a result of the new Spotify “play button” announced today. Web publishers who include a short piece of code on their sites can display a button that lets registered Spotify users begin streaming music instantly. FanRx, formerly known as BandRx, was a launch partner and so is the first to bring the functionality to Facebook tabs.

Artists choose which songs to feature, then when users click the play button, the song begins playing in the Spotify desktop app — launching the player if it is not already open. Users who do not have Spotify yet will be prompted to download the app and create an account using their Facebook login. (See how it works here.)

Spotify has a free, ad-supported service, as well as subscription tiers up to $9.99 per month for unlimited streaming and additional features. Users must have a Facebook account to join Spotify. The app prompts users to share their listening activity on Facebook through Open Graph integration, but it is not a requirement, and there is an “incognito mode” to temporarily disable sharing.

Since September 2011‘s launch of Open Graph, Spotify songs have been playable from Facebook News Feed, Ticker and Timeline. Users can start and pause music while they browse the social network, and even have an option to listen to a song simultaneously with friends. On artists’ pages, Facebook highlights tracks your friends have listened to.

Now with FanRx, artists can customize which songs to include on their tab applications. Although page tabs are declining in use since Facebook removed the default landing tab option with the Timeline redesign, it is still possible to point ads to specific tabs or share direct links in posts to fans. We’ve seen a number of band-focused applications trying to innovate to maintain relevance.

Spotify opened its platform to third-party developers in November 2011. We could see a similar platform-on-a-platform model from Instagram, which has some APIs available in beta. For example, users can take photos using the Hipstamatic mobile app, then publish them through Instagram, which can then share to Facebook. With Spotify, developers like FanRx can include song widgets in their apps so that users can play music from Spotify, which can publish back to Facebook. The social network might watch Spotify’s growth as a platform and take cues for how it might want to handle Instagram since it acquired the company on Monday.

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Facebook’s Subscribe Button for Websites is Now Live

Less than a day after announcing it was introducing a version of its “Subscribe” button for websites, Facebook has taken the new feature live.

According to a post on the Facebook developer blog, the new button has the same functionality as it does on Facebook, with a subscriber seeing the public posts of the person they subscribed to appear in their News Feed. In addition, the new Subscribe action is also shared to friends of the subscriber, so anyone who sees that update will also be able to Subscribe to someone’s public posts via their News Feed.

The subscribe button is already live on a number of websites such as Absolute Radio, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and Time.com. The HTML5, iframe and XFBML versions of the Subscribe button’s code are now available to everyone on the developer blog post.

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Facebook Roundup: IPO, Taiwan Data Center, Yahoo, Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Mobile and Translate Button

Proposed Law May Affect Facebook IPO – Legislation was introduced in the Senate this week that could result in the delay of Facebook’s IPO. A long-standing finance rule requires that companies with 500 or more shareholders make their finances available to the public (typically prompting companies to also make their stock available to the public). Facebook had accumulated many shareholders from distributing stock to employees and from its shares being bought and sold on private exchanges. The new rule would up the minimum threshold to 2000, presumably giving Facebook more leeway to decide if and when it will make its financial information and its shares public.

Could Yahoo’s Patents Hurt Facebook’s IPO? – Forbes has a piece this week that compared Yahoo’s extensive IP portfolio as potential revenue to Facebook’s ads-centric revenue approach, speculating that whoever owns that IP could charge licensing fees to Facebook.

Facebook Not Planning Taiwan Data Center – Facebook is not set to open Asia’s largest cloud data center in Taiwan, at the Central Taiwan Science Park, contrary to a widely republished article.

Mark Zuckerberg Officially Visits Harvard – The Atlantic gave an overview of Harvard University’s newspaper, The Crimson’s, coverage of Mark Zuckerberg while he attended the school.

Facebook COO to Interview NJ Gov – Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is set to interview New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, taking questions from users in an online town hall Monday. Note that Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to the Newark New Jersey school system. [Image Via Facebook]

Vitrue’s Social Mobile User Engagement Report – Vitrue released a report this week looking at social engagement with brands via mobile devices. Some interesting results included negative engagement with punctuation marks, short posts get more engagement, images improve engagement and weekends are when the most mobile interaction occurs.

How Well Does the Facebook Translate Button Work? – Lexiophiles compiled a brief analysis of how accurate Facebook’s translate button is.

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The Facebook Like Button Placement Guide for Websites

The following is an excerpt from the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing your company, app, brand, or website using Facebook. The full version of this article, available through a Facebook Marketing Bible subscription, includes an explanation of which Like buttons have publishing capabilities, strategies for adding Like buttons to brand websites, social games, and web apps, and more content types that news, shopping, and review sites can add Like buttons to.

Facebook’s Like button can help a variety of sites forge communication channels with their visitors and generate referral traffic from Facebook. We’ve previously published a Like button style guide for choosing between the various Like button formats, and a walk-through of how to pick the Open Graph meta tags that will maximize the lifetime value of your Like buttons. In the third installment of this series on using the Like button, we’ll look at examples of what kinds of content sites can add Like buttons to and what types of posts to publish to those who click these buttons.

Articles –  Placing lightweight Like buttons on articles allow users to quickly share them with friends, but the button’s owner can’t publish future news feed updates to those who click.Authors – Add Like buttons for authors to their dedicated author profiles, next to their by-line in articles they’ve written, or simply at the beginning or end of any of their articles. Then publish any new stories, quotes, or insights by that author to all those who’ve clicked their Like button. For example, news site The Independent has added a Like button to one of its authors, Simon Carr.

Topics – Rather than putting lightweight Like buttons on articles, news sites can tie Like buttons to a topic discussed within the article. When future articles discuss the same topic, sites can reuse the same Like button, and publish these articles as news feed updates to those who’ve already clicked the button. For example, a Like button could be created for Barack Obama, healthcare, or the iPhone 4.

Review Subjects – By placing a standard Like button on the subjects being reviewed, such as a restaurant or film, users can express their affinity for that thing to their friends, and opt in to receive news feed updates whenever news reviews of it are added. For example, a site could add Like buttons to Bender’s Bar & Grill, or the film Aladdin.

Products – Placing Like buttons on each item an ecommerce store carries gives users a quick way to share with friends, driving additional sales. The site can then publish news feed stories to those who’ve clicked the buttons about when items are put on sale, almost out of stock, restocked, or redesigned. This button can also be shown at the end of the checkout flow, making it easy for users to share the news of their purchase with friends. For example, a bike store could put the Like button on the new Tommaso road bike.

Access the full Like button placement guide for websites containing strategies for more types a sites, a review of the functionalities of different Like buttons, and a walk-through of how to publish to Like buttons, as well as the other parts of our series on the Like button in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s industry leading resource for marketing and advertising on Facebook.

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The Like Button Style Guide: How to Pick the Design That’s Right for Your Website

The following is an excerpt from the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing your company, app, brand, or website using Facebook. The full version of this article, available through a Facebook Marketing Bible subscription, includes a guide to choosing whether to use the verb “Like” or “Recommend” in your button, what button color scheme will match best with your site, advantages and disadvantages of showing users the faces of friends who’ve clicked a Like button, and exactly what signals are summed to determine the Like count that a button displays.

This is the first installment in a three part series detailing how to use the Like button. Subsequent installments will cover how to choose the Open Graph meta tags that will give your Like buttons the ability to publish news feed stories to users, and strategies for implementing Like buttons on a variety of sites ranging from news publishers to brand websites to social games.

The Like button is an embeddable plugin for third-party websites and Facebook apps. When clicked by a Facebook user, it publishes the piece of content the button is attached to to the user’s wall and the news feeds of their friends. In many cases it also causes the Liked object to appear in the user’s profile and allows the owner of the button to publish news feed updates to the user in the future.

Facebook offers several different implementations of its Like button social plugin. Here we’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different stylistic options, and provide a guide for choosing the Like button implementation that will drive the most clicks and thereby generate the most referral traffic for your website.

To create and install a Like Button:

Visit the Like button documentation page Input the URL of the website page or piece of content you want the Like button to representUse the configurator in Step 1 to choose style options for your Like buttonClick the “Get Code” buttonCopy the iframe or XFMBL codePaste the code into your website’s codeReturn to the Like button documentation pageUse the configurator in Step 2 to select Open Graph tags in order to describe the website page or piece of content your Like button representsClick the “Get Tags” buttonCopy the tag codesPaste the tag codes into the of your website

URL to Like: Use the URL of the entity you want the Like button to represent. You can embed the button on multiple website pages, such a both a ecommerce product page and a directory of products. However, his URL should the one dedicated to what the button represents, such as the product page.

Layout Style: This determines the size and amount of social context that appears next to the button. There are three options

Standard – displays social text to the right of the button and the profile pictures of friends below of applicable. Minimum width: 225 pixels. Default width: 450 pixels. Height: 35 pixels (without photos) or 80 pixels (with photos). The widest, and all around largest Like button, and the only one that can display the names and faces of a user’s friends who have already clicked. Best for sites with ample empty space, or which dynamically resize, such as blogs. Its large size makes it especially noticeable, and the faces of friends creates a compelling personal social recommendation to click. For most sites that have space for this button, this is the best layout option.

button_count - displays the total number of likes to the right of the button. Minimum width: 90 pixels. Default width: 90 pixels. Height: 20 pixels. The shortest and all round smallest Like button. Best for sites displaying large quantities of Like buttons on a single page, or that are trying to integrate the button into a short header of a news article. With no protruding elements, it is the most elegant Like button, and is therefore the best choice for those trying to minimize Facebook’s presence or impact on their site’s design.

box_count - Displays the total number of likes above the button. Minimum width: 55 pixels. Default width: 55 pixels. Height: 65 pixels. The narrowest Like button. Best for sites displaying multiple social media sharing buttons side by side. It depicts the total Like count more prominently than other layouts, and is therefore good for sites that receive a lot of LIkes. It is also good for niche sites as it provides the most compelling social recommendation that doesn’t require a user’s friends to have clicked, as the Likes of non-friends are displayed prominently in the count.

Access the full Like button style guide including tips for choosing between Like and Recommend terminology, pros and cons of showing the faces of friends who’ve clicked the button, and more marketing best practices at the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s industry leading resource for marketing and advertising on Facebook.

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B.U.T.T.O.N. Party Game Now On Steam

A little over two months after releasing for XBLIG, B.U.T.T.O.N. (Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now), the Copenhagen Collective's "physical party game" and finalist for this year's IGF Nuovo award, has released for Windows PC, available on Steam.

In B.U.T.T.O.N., up to eight player gather around and step away from a computer, waiting for instructions, then racing to the keyboard/controllers to complete unpredictable challenges, like jumping up and down, doing push-ups, or acting like monkeys.

The PC edition is usually available for $2.99, but you can get a slight 10 percent discount and grab it for $2.69 if you buy B.U.T.T.O.N. on Steam today!

Posted by Eric Caoili on March 7, 2011 6:00 AM | Permalink

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