In the past less-than 48 hours, my Dec. 2011 post “How to comment with the new Facebook iPad app” has buh-lown up. My blog has gotten almost 1,800 hits, with the majority of folks looking at this post. What’s going on?!
I’m really sorry to say, but I don’t know. My app is working properly (sorry!). Readers have commented that, basically, their Facebook iPad app isn’t allowing them to comment on posts in their newsfeeds. When these users click on “comment” on a post, a box should pop up on the right and you should be allowed to comment. See my photo above.
But for a lot of folks, it seems this box is disappearing before they can comment, and it’s not reappearing when they tap “comment.” It doesn’t seem to be a problem exclusive to different iPad versions. And the smarties that we are, we’ve all checked the App Store to make sure we have the latest edition of the Facebook iPad app, which we do, from April 2, 2012. It also isn’t a problem with wireless keyboards.
Let’s keep discussing this and helping each other figure out a solution! I’ll do my research and you do yours. It looks like Facebook needs to fix a glitch…and from the looks of my blog stats, it needs to be fixed fast!
According to a Mashable article, “Manage Your Brand’s Facebook Page From this New App,” Facebook unveiled yesterday an app made just for admins of pages.
YESSSS.
I’ve been a blogger for about 3.5 years, and no series of posts on this blog has gotten more hits and comments than the ones I’ve written about the lack of an app for Facebook admins.
I’m beyond excited, and I hope the hundreds of people using search terms like “how the $@!% do I update my biz FB page on iPad” are excited now, too.
Note: It’s an iPhone app, and there isn’t an iPad version yet, but blow it up to 2x and it’ll be just fine. Or don’t. Either way it’s a-okay.
What we can do now (aka: oh, the power!):
1) We can now post a photo AND give it a caption. All at the same time! [With the regular Facebook app, we couldn’t; we had to post the photo, then comment on it if we wanted to add a description. And half the time, it didn’t work, so I had to scurry to Safari and comment.]
2) We can view insights!
3) We can post knowing for sure we’re posting as the page! [Long story short, with the regular Facebook app, as you’re typing a comment or update on your business page, it appears as if it will come from your personal account. But when you posted, it posted as your page. There was always a split second of anxiety not quite knowing what it’ll choose to do…]
4) When we post a link to a webpage, just like the desktop version of Facebook, it still provides a preview and image. It shows the URL, and you can’t delete it, but I can settle for that.
5) We can delete comments and ban users. Tools I use rarely but am happy to have.
Here are the past posts discussing this Facebook iPad app topic:
October 14, 2011: Everything’s great about Facebook’s new iPad app, except…
December 1, 2011: Reader finds solution for annoying Facebook iPad glitch
March 23, 2012: It’s not you: Why you can’t be a good admin with the Facebook iPad app
Normally when I blog about Facebook, it has to do with using Facebook for marketing, but this series is going to take a look at how we use Facebook in our personal lives.
Earlier this week, I was listening to a webinar, and one of the featured speakers was the corporate social media manager at a company with many local stores across the United States. She was saying that the community and public relations people at the individual stores are best suited to also be the social media people.
“We trust our store marketers to decide which content they want to share and how,” she said. “Our store marketers know what’s going to resonate in the real world and online.”
It gave me pause. Intentionally or not, she said that the online world we live in and the tangible world we live in aren’t the same.
Is it?! Social media (especially Facebook), in addition to other online outlets, are a part of most people’s everyday lives. Sharing and absorbing information on Facebook is something we do, like drinking coffee or riding the train to work. Facebook has 845 million monthly active users.
But lately and coincidentally, I had started to wonder: is Facebook the real world? Has it become an ingrained, no-brainer part of our culture, thus making it “real”? Or, is there a separation between Facebook and everything we do outside of Facebook. And, when it comes to who we are in face-to-face life and who we are on our Facebook profiles, do most people pull a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
In addition to the webinar, a few other things precipated this blog series: My significant other and I were recently out listening to a live band. There was a group of college students at a table near us. It seemed like every time we turned around, they were posing for photos and then furiously tapping their phones, assumably texting or sharing them online.
To me, it seemed like they were spending so much time taking photos and sharing them online that they a) weren’t interacting with the others in the group in a meaningful way and b) not appreciating and absorbing their surroundings (aka, not listening to the awesome band on stage!).
Or, has capturing a moment by sharing it online become the new way of experiencing the moment? Is it more important to remember parts of an experience than it is to experience it wholly in the present?
Then, coincidentally (this blog series was meant to be), I came across an article from Psychology Today, “Quitting Facebook Could Make You Happier,” written by Dr. Michael W. Austin, associate professor of philosophy at Eastern Kentucky University. His article is based on information from a recent study showing that people who are on Facebook believe that others have happier lives than is actually the case.
This is the crux of the article: “…don’t judge the happiness of others by their Facebook page, status updates, pictures, and so on. … Whether intentionally or not, people tend to put their best (if not entirely accurate) face forward in such settings.”
A day or so later, a good and beautiful friend of mine implied that she was feeling a little down after perusing the class notes section of her college’s alumni magazine. Freshly empowered with the article’s message, I told her that the class notes section of college alumni magazines are like Facebook: people are going to publish their best and happiest sides, more intentionally than not, I’ll argue, when it comes to Facebook. (How many of us untag ourselves from a bad photo?!)
(Of course, as we all know, some people use Facebook to air all their dirty, negative laundry, but that’s neither here nor there.)
However, a college alumni magazine would be considered part of the “real world.” Right? So what makes putting your best face forward in that outlet “real” and putting the same face forward in another outlet not part of the “real world”?
[Because this is a series, I can end this post with a question!]
After a friend sent me a Buzzfeed article on 13 Simple Steps To Get You Through the Day, I wandered around and found the very funny 25 Friend Requests You Should Never Accept. Which made me want to blog about this one person’s Facebook behavior. So this isn’t exactly a PR lesson, unless you want to learn how not to behave on social media.
This person is in love and just can’t keep his heart from spilling all over his Facebook.
Oh, man. He’s hurting. And it’s interfering with his spelling and punctuation.
[This fellow falls under three types of Facebook users, according to this CNN article: The TMIer, The Bad Grammarian and The Sympathy-Baiter.]
Learn to spell.
Of course, this status is from his gal. So maybe it’s a match made in heaven!
More to read: 10 of the Most Brutal Facebook Ownings from Guyism.com (this article is great); 25 Most Ridiculous Facebook Conversations from list25.com (also great); 10 Funny Facebook Status Updates from oddee.com; and 50 of the best from happyplace.com.
abbymalikPR 