When I finally saw it pop up in the Google Play store this week I decided to put my preconceived notions about Home aside and give it a whirl. Immediately after installing my whole phone changed. It was as if I had just switched operating system, I was no longer on Android I was on Facebook OS.

Facebook Home is effectively a launcher and replaces your home screen with a full-screen sliding news feed. The user interface now consists of a tiny bubble of my face which can be dragged left to launch Messenger, up to access the app launcher, or right to open my most recently used app. These are the only options available to you and everything else is hidden away behind fiddly drag and swipe options.

The Facebook Home UI.

All of this sounds lovely in Facebook land where guys dressed in hoodies and flip flops laugh at videos of screaming goats all day, but for those of us who want to use our phone for tasks outside of Facebook it is a real hindrance. My apps aren’t just there anymore, I have to go through a series of steps open them. And my widgets have completely disappeared, which for any Android user is like losing a limb. Important features that I had customised to be accessible with one touch such as Google Now, Twitter, Phone, Messages, and Email now take several actions to access. I counted that it took me 5 different actions to open Gmail as opposed to one before. I can’t even see basic information such as the time, notifications, battery indicator, or the weather.

Home also takes over your lock screen and only allows you to unlock your phone after you choose a specific app to open, it then takes you to your old lock screen where you still have to swipe and enter your pin. So effectively it adds two or three extra steps to unlock your phone. This is a real inconvenience, although it can be disabled in the options.

The news feed itself doesn’t exactly lend itself to the full screen experience. Images don’t fit on the screen properly and look dark and pixelated, even high-res images. The posts displayed on Facebook Home appear to be completely random, sometimes it would show me something posted 5 minutes ago and other times it would show a post from 3 days ago. With such a push for content to be instant Home seems to be overwhelmingly slow and irrelevant. Home is also very slow, after pressing the home button on my device when inside another app it sometimes took 5 seconds to load the Facebook Home screen. Another issue I found was that after scrolling through a number of posts there was no way (that I could find, anyway) of returning to the most recent post.

Engagement is one thing about Home that is easy and intuitive. Simple ‘Like’ and ‘Comment’ buttons in the bottom left hand corner work nicely, although I did find it easy to accidently hit the ‘Like’ button (always awkward).

One of the most talked about features on the launch of Home was Chat Heads. Despite the name, Chat Heads is a feature that makes a lot of sense. One thing that has always bugged me about the phones I’ve owned (both Android and iOS) is that messaging takes you out of whatever you are doing. Chat Heads tackles this by allowing you to view and reply to a message on-the-fly without it interrupting what you are doing. This feature works quite nicely and is something I would like to see implemented into Android.

How Chat Heads appear.

So after using Facebook Home I’ve decided I’m probably not the target market, but even looking through the eyes of an avid Facebook user I can’t see the benefits of it over the standard Facebook app. It’s clunky, disruptive, slow, and actually makes the whole Facebook experience rather tedious. The main reason I, and most people I know, own an Android device is for the customisability, Facebook Home takes all of that away. It cuts off access to your widgets and home screens and makes it difficult to access other apps. It’s early days, and it may well improve with future updates, but I fear that once Zuckerberg and co. roll out ads on the platform it will be even more unusable.

I’m not alone in my feelings toward Home, the app has an unimpressive 2.2 star rating in the Play store. Here are a few comments from other users:

“Not an intuitive app. Made my phone so frustratingly complicated to use that I uninstalled after just four or five hours.” – Victoria Wiley

“It limits my phone. If I wanted a single company to take over my homescreen appearance, I could use an iPhone.” – Lee Milstein

“Not intuitive and it makes my phone butt ugly.” – Ric Brown

Although, it seems to have won a few fans:

“It does exactly what it’s suppossed to do. It has a beautiful interface and is quite handy for people that use fb often.” – Keanu James

“Simple and easy to use. I love it.” – Gregory Ro…

Have you used Facebook Home yet? What do you think of it?

The post Hands On with Facebook Home appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This past week Google announced that it will give its users a ‘digital will’ option for their online data. The premise behind it being that users can decide what happens to their online account after they die.

It has been dubbed “data-after-death” and lets users tell Google what to do with emails and other data if their account becomes inactive.

Google email and YouTube posting can be deleted after three, six or twelve months of inactivity. Alternatively they can choose to give access to the data to specific people.

This got me thinking, what happens to all your data when you have gone? What about your Facebook page or Twitter? Social media usage has been increasing at an exponential rate but no one has considered the implications to the data on there.

Both Twitter and Facebook have policies in place to allow users to request that an account be deleted in the event of users passing. Twitter users can obtain a permanent backup of all tweets from a designated account.

What if you do not want to close your Social Media accounts? How about carrying on your social media activity even after you have died?!

Here are a couple of options;

Dead Social

Dead Social enables a user to send out messages after death from various social media accounts.

The key features are;

• Send messages directly to your private Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin account
• Send out a final message and / or series of scheduled messages
• Release unseen video and audio messages

DeadSocial covers all the post-death social media options, scheduling public Facebook posts, Tweets and even LinkedIn posts go out after someone has died. The free service will publish the text, video or audio messages directly from that person’s social media accounts or it can send a series of scheduled messages in the future, say on an anniversary or a loved one’s birthday. For now, all DeadSocial messages will be public, but the company plans to add support for private messages in the future.

LivesOn

This caught my attention because I read about the service and watched an episode of Black Mirror that contained very similar themes.

Essentially LivesOn analyse’s a user’s tweets and learns about what is frequently tweeted and the style of tweets. The idea being that in time a tweet from LivesOn would be identical (or as close) to what the original user would tweet. Tweets will begin to populate on your LivesOn feed. A user has to nominate an executor for the account and they can decide whether to keep the account live.

LivesOn’s slogan is;

When your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting

Legacy Locker

The previous two examples specifically dealt with social media accounts, Legacy Locker deals with your online presence as a whole. Legacy will manage your Facebook, Paypal, Linkedin, iTunes and Gmail to name but a few.

There are different levels of accounts from free to $30 a month. The free account will store and hand over 3 logins to one beneficiary and send out a farewell message to your loved ones, the top tier account has unlimited access.

Would you be interested in any of these services? It would be great to know your thoughts.

Please Tweet us @PushONLTD

The post When life logs you off, how to stay online appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Top 5 April Fool Digital Jokes

1. Bing

This is what happened when you searched for ‘Google’ on Bing:

2. YouTube – ‘YouTube’s ready to select a winner’

YouTube released a video saying the service would be coming to an end and they will be picking the “best video”:

3. Google

Google were to introduce a search-by-smell feature called Google “nose”

4. Google Treasure Map

Google added a new feature onto the Google Maps page, allowing for the World to be viewed in a ‘Treasure Map’ format.

5. Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic launches a glass-bottomed plane

Mashable created a list of the 2013 pranks, which can be found here:

The Ultimate Roundup of 2013′s Biggest April Fools’ Day Pranks

Facebook updates

Facebook’s messenger app has added VOIP which has now become available in the UK, following on from the US and Canada.

The option appears on active Messenger users’ profile page as ‘Free call’. I have checked this and it has not arrived on my screen yet but I imagine it will be rolled out soon. The call will be placed via WiFi or 3G.

Although the idea is great in theory in practice it will take a while before it takes off, why would you use an app to call and text when there are plenty already out there?

Will you be using it?

Facebook Phone

Screenshots of a phone rumoured to be announced by Facebook has been leaked ahead of an event on Thursday.

 The hardware will be produced by Android and have dedicated ‘Facebook’ style graphics and homepage.

The post Digital RoundUP 02/04/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Google Reader

Last week via the Google Reader blog it was announced that Google Reader would be shut down as of 1^st July.

The statement said;

usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products.If you want to retain your Reader data, including subscriptions, you can do so through Google Takeout.

This has upset and affected a lot of its current users such as myself! It’s clear that Google want us to be using Google + as a resource for any news feeds we have. However at present there is no way to export your subscription list without doing it manually into G+.

I like many users use Google Reader on a daily basis; it’s the way I get all my news first thing in the morning all in one place.  On the other hand, will we really miss it?

RSS feeds have been around for a long time and how we digest our news has changed, these days people check Twitter for the latest goings on, or follow people/ groups on social media.

But what are the alternatives when Google Reader closes?

Feedly

Since the announcement that Google Reader is going to close I tried out Feedly and have not been alone with around 500,000 new users signing up for the service in the last few days.

The best feature is the fact that by signing using your Google account all your Google Reader subscriptions transfer over, which is great if you have a large number of subscriptions. The layout is simple and easy to use and it does what Google Reader does and will satisfy most users.

Flipboard

Currently Flipboard is stricty an app for Tablets and smart phones. It uses RSS feeds much like the way Feedly does however it is presented in an aesthetically pleasing way.

The post Digital RoundUP 18/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Facebook Layout Update

Facebook are at it again, once we get used to their changes on the website, they bring out another one and it takes some getting used to.

The post Digital RoundUP 11/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

PlayStation 4 Announced 

On Wednesday night the worst kept secret in video gaming was finally revealed with the announcement of the Sony Playstation 4. During a two hour presentation the assembled media were told and shown the capabilities of the ‘most powerful platform ever’. However we did not get to see the console and were only shown the  ”DualShock 4″ controller.

Interestingly there was an acknowledgement from Sony that the previous console was difficult to develop for. This time round they contacted games developers whilst the console was being made, hopefully this means that more games companies want to get involved on the PS4.

So what can we expect with the PS4?

• A highly powerful AMD x86-based 8-core CPU, an enhanced GPU and amazingly 8GB of DDR5 RAM. This all means this will be the most powerful games console ever made and would go toe-toe with most gaming PC’s on the market.
• Games will still be on Blu-ray discs but all games will be fully downloadable, and can be played instantly with downloading continuing as you play.
• The PS4 will have an ‘Instant On’ feature which means the console never turns off but rather hibernates. This means that the user can instantly return to whatever was being played prior to turning off the console.
• The controller features a ‘share’ button which means gameplay can be instantly uploaded to Facebook and video streaming sites.
• The “PlayStation App” will enable iPhone, iPad, and Android based smartphones and tablets to become second screens
• PlayStation 4 Eye – 1280 x 800 camera (Xbox Kinect style feature)

Overall the PlayStation 4 is a smart piece of kit, the biggest disappointment was the fact the console was absent from the press conference. However this means it will most likely get shown at E3 in June. We are looking forward to it, now its over to Microsoft.

The PlayStation 4 is scheduled to be on sale in December 2013.

Google Glass

Google have been developing their revolutionary augmented reality head-mounted display for quite a while now, with little being shown apart from the headset over the last few years.

Now they are trying to push the sales in a social campaign by asking the question, ‘What would you do if you had Glass?’. To enter the competition you have to answer in 50 words of less with #ifihadglass using Google+ or Twitter, photos can be used and a short 15 second video can also be included.

The main drawback is that this is only available to U.S residents, meaning we will just have to write our own #ifihadglass tweet:

‘#ifihadglass I would visit the Wonders of the World and compare them using Glass to show the originals compared to 2013’s Wonders of the World.’ – Pedrom Pourkashanian

‘#ifihadglass I would go to a new city where I couldn’t speak the language and try and get a date by the end of the day’ – Jonny Pennington

‘#ifihadglass I could finally be on time for stuff without getting lost for 2 hours’ – James Whitelock

So I pose this question to you… What would you do if you had Glass?

Find more details here – if you are in the US you can enter on Twitter or Google+

interflora DISAPPEARS

Last Thursday, Martin Macdonald broke the news that Interflora had effectively been ‘wiped off the face of the Internet.’ Google hit the flower delivery service with a penalty which saw it virtually disappear from the SERPs for prime keywords it was previously ranking #1 for, including its own brand name. The company was sitting at the top of the search results for search terms such as ‘flowers’, ‘flower delivery’ and ‘florist’, but now finds itself buried in the 5^th or 6^th page.

We can only speculate the full extent of Interflora’s bad behaviour, but it appears a long history of bad link building practices has caught up with them. A quick Link Detox showed over 70% toxic and suspicious links, this includes advertorials, link networks, web directories and paid blog posts on abandoned networks.

Reminder: Google’s guidelines on paid links that pass PageRank also apply to “advertorial” pages. See goo.gl/PhwsY for more info.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) February 22, 2013

Following this incident, last Friday Matt Cutts posted a polite reminder on Google’s Webmaster Central blog that selling links is naughty and can lead to a penalty. It will be interesting to see how, and if, Interflora recover from this nightmare, whether they move to a new domain or start a long and gruelling recovery process, it won’t be easy.

The post Digital RoundUP 25/02/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Text version:

Social media became even bigger in 2012:

The post A Look Back at Social Media in 2012 [Slideshare] appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Of the 52 adverts shown nationally, 26 of them involved Twitter (mostly mentioning hashtags to follow and join in on) while just 4 of these mentioned Facebook, a decline from last year where both platforms were mentioned in 8 adverts. With no mentions for Google+ and only one for YouTube and Instagram (although a very successful advert from quick thinking Oreo), is Twitter emerging as the front runner in social media?

There were over 24million tweets related to the Super Bowl this year, the highest number to date and three times higher than last year’s, it was also more than twice the number of tweets sent across the whole of Euro 2012 which at the time broke the record for the highest number of tweets sent per second during the final.

Although programmes are increasingly using hashtags, TV advertising in the UK tends to encourage viewers to visit their Facebook page. Despite this, a recent report on eConsultancy suggests that while Facebook generates more website traffic, it is Twitter that encourages more leads through sales and enquiries.

Last year it was reported that the USA had over 22million active Twitter users while the UK had almost 7million. This compares to Facebook which claims to have 163million users in America and 32million in the UK. With Twitter users increasing by 40% in the last six months and reports of an increase in users leaving Facebook, is it time that brands in the UK started to follow suit and focus more on Twitter than Facebook?

Our favorite adverts from the Super Bowl:

The post The Social Super Bowl appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Luckily the brands I work with at the moment are very switched on, but this story riled me today because I’ve seen this ‘they’ll have to do it this way if they want to speak to us’ and ‘that’s the best way for US to deal with the customer’ approach previously. I’ve been in the room with one of these people who wouldn’t listen to my very valid ‘but the customer simply won’t do that – it will annoy them and they will just leave the site’ concern. It was ignored and the project was rolled out. Surprise surprise, things didn’t go well down the line.

Now I wouldn’t claim to be a leading expert in marketing and communications, especially as there are always things to learn and new ways of being creative, but I’ve been in customer service roles for 12 years, worked with a lot of companies in that time and dealt with a ridiculous amount of customers and clients. I’ve also seen and been involved with a lot of marketing plans over the past 5 years, completed a Psychology degree and I have also been a customer myself, so I’d like to think I’ve got a handle on customer relations and behaviour.

The one major thing I’ve learned (and this shouldn’t come as a surprise to most people) is that people WILL talk about the companies they come into contact with (especially if they have a bad experience) and people WILL choose the avenue that is most convenient for them to get in touch. If you do not provide a range of options for contact and make doing business with your company easy, people will choose your competitor who does. You cannot stop this. And you cannot control this.

You also cannot say that you aren’t doing social media. Sorry to say it, but if you are a company that provides a product or service (I think that covers most companies!) then your customers are likely to be doing social media, and therefore so are you if they mention you.

If not dealt with correctly, complaints can escalate and let’s be honest, people love a good complaint and a good gossip, as Mr Kiely from Ryanair clearly knows – ‘We find that if an issue breaks in one country, within a matter of hours or days it has spread across Europe,’ he said. ‘It is important to nip those in the bud.’ – Sorry love, but simply denying social media as a channel is not nipping things in the bud. How risky.

To illustrate, I tweeted about the article above and one of the comments I received back was this:

I agree.

The post They’ll have to do it this way if they want to speak to us.. appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Vine is a great looking app and its user-friendly interface makes it a breeze to record and share videos. Users simply hold their finger on the screen to record; this effortless approach allows users to incorporate multiple shots in each video, sparking huge creative potential.

The great idea behind Vine is that it’s direct, instant and quirky. Consumers and brands alike can express themselves in these little 6 second windows, and just like Instagram makes us all think we’re photographers, Vine will make us think we’re video directors.

It’s going to be exciting to see how Vine is adopted by the business world, I recently looked at the possible marketing opportunities it possesses. Some brands have wasted no time in playing with the app; take a look at some of our favourites:

tech

So earlier on we showed off the cover…but here it is in action, courtesy of new Twitter Video service Vine. vine.co/v/b5FgPUL5LAg

— tech. (@techdotmag) January 25, 2013

thinkmodo

this is @whoisthebaldguy‘s daily morning routine: vine.co/v/bJJpFt0pxh6 #starbucks #coffee #vine

— Thinkmodo (@thinkmodo) January 28, 2013

red vines

We made a @vineapp Vine video of Red Vines. #Vineception vine.co/v/b5D7vzrz6OY

— Red Vines (@RedVines) January 25, 2013

al-monitor

Trying out the new #Vine @twitter app! Courtesy of @callysally, here is a glimpse at our Washington, D.C. offices! vine.co/v/b5deDmJFlKQ

— Al-Monitor (@AlMonitor) January 24, 2013

the barbarian group

We’re crazy for Vine at the Barbarian Group: vine.co/v/b5dOK5Etp7F

— The Barbarian Group (@barbariangroup) January 24, 2013

The post Introducing Vine, Twitter’s New Video Sharing App appeared first on PushON Ltd.