Facebook and Mobile 2.0

This week, we learnt about Facebook and Mobile 2.0.

Mobile 2.0 is basically the handphone we see today – mobile internet services that harness the social web. These include multimedia feature phones like Smartphones which can offer things like video sharing, wi-fi, e-mail, etc. We compared handphones a decade ago and handphones today and noted the differences. Which by the way, is pretty startling if you haven’t really thought about it.

10 years ago, handphones were just basic machines. They had screens that were 1/4 of your palm, with just 2 colours. And all you could do with it was smsing, talking, playing games and maybe Infrared.

Today, the phones have extended way beyond that. Now we take pictures, videos, Tweet, go on Facebook, and our screens are so much larger. Plus, it’s multi-coloured – a feature for which I’m truly thankful. Some phones even have in-depth organisers. I think people literally use the phone to organise their life these days.

For Facebook, we discovered how to set up pages and groups, and what were the differences between the two. One aspect I thought was really useful was that one provided a URL which contained a proper name, instead of just numbers. So basically, a company that wanted to get publicity for itself on Facebook could include its brand name in the URL, which makes it more easily identifiable rather than a mish-mash of unintelligible numbers.

With Facebook, your online presence is taken to another level. It’s easier for companies to connect with your customers – both faster and more personable. For instance, a company can send quick notifications of its new products or upcoming sales or events via Facebook, rather then sending out brochures or e-mails which are often treated as junk mail, and tossed aside.

I read an article recently. Calling Twitter a “PR arsenal”, the writer remarked that had Kanye West had a Twitter presence, he could have tweeted his apology to Taylor Swift and the rest of the world for his antics on stage, which would have been online in seconds, rather than wait hours later to blog his apology. The result? His reputation suffered terribly, and all around the world – fans and celebrities were lambasting him on Twitter. 300,00 tweets in total in merely an hour after the incident occurred. If anything, the power of social media lies in its speed.

That said, social media can boost your online brand management, but dabbling in unethical practices, producing shoddy products and offering poor customer service can still bring a company down irregardless of how many members or fans they can have on Facebook. One point the class also discussed was that Facebook was essentially a means to an end. The Facebook page should be a platform that brings viewers to the homepage, rather than leaving it as a dead-end.

Facebook is a powerful tool if harnessed the right way, but it is not a panacea.