TAMBA Internet

What the New Facebook Home App Means for Brands

The new Android app, Facebook Home, is the latest mobile app to send ripples of both excitement and concern through the social media marketing world. For big brands, the question is how to leverage this new development for maximum benefit at minimum risk.

Smartphone and tablet users are deeply attached to their mobile devices. According to recently released data, 79% of smartphone users reach for their mobile within 15 minutes of waking.^[1] So what are the first apps they use? Email, their web browser, and… Facebook, of course.^[1]

In fact, the average smartphone user checks Facebook 14 times per day, spending more than half an hour per day on Facebook via their mobile^[1] – that’s without counting the time they spend logged into Facebook via any other devices.

Bringing Facebook to Mobile (And Making it Stick)

Facebook is naturally keen to maximise mobile use as more and more of its market shifts from desktop PCs to tablets and phones.

The official Facebook app for mobile presented users with frustratingly limited options and is generally considered less user-friendly than Facebook’s world wide web incarnation. Facebook Home is different. It takes over the full home screen of your Android device, displaying a never-ending stream of status updates, shared media, and conversations.

The advertising potential of this app is breathtaking. Localisation plus the Cover Feed’s content filtering will combine to realise timely, highly targeted and personalised display advertising on smartphone home screens around the world. Sponsored notifications may also be an option when Facebook releases its Home ad inventory.
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It’s Christmastime at TAMBA Towers
We’ve worked so hard all year
We’ve worn out keyboards, mice and pens
Given blood… And sweat… And tears

Campaigns have launched
Awards were won
We celebrated hard
And now we say a huge THANK YOU
To clients, with this card

We hope you’ve had a prosperous year
Learned social media tricks a-plenty
Used apps and games for famous names
To build those brands… Exponentially!

And we look forward to the year ahead
We know it will be grand
So enjoy Christmas and have a happy new year
From us all in TAMBA-land

Thank you to all our clients, suppliers, staff both present and past for your business, contribution and friendship. We’ve had a fantastic year in 2012 and we are very excited for 2013. We’ll be back on 2nd January so Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Yesterday I visited St Paul’s School for Girls in Edgbaston, Birmingham to take them through D-Day, an initiative by BIMA to engage school age children with careers in digital. Across the country over 1800 young people participated with the support of nearly 70 digital agencies. The aim of the day was for the agencies to talk about life in an agency and their own experience before getting the students to undertake their own digital challenge, creating a social media strategy, a mobile application, a viral video, a digital design piece or a coding challenge.

My day was spent with 22 bright and very enthusiastic young ladies who were full of great ideas but also incredibly astute as to the many apps, social media tools and technologies which exist today.

After my talk about how I’d setup TAMBA (at not much older than some of them were!) I did over 30 minutes of Q & A which either means they really enjoyed it and wanted to know more, or I didn’t tell them very much in my speech! I’ve also agreed to have a rather large number of students in for work experience – they immediately called me out after I’d told them how important it is to show enthusiasm and stand out!

The afternoon was spent researching, wireframing, filming and designing and we’re all looking forward to the judges’ feedback on each group’s response to the Challenge.

I had a little review of the feedback at the end of the day and many of the students are now seriously considering careers in digital as a result of the D-Day experience; some were particularly keen on becoming app developers, others game designers and animators and it’s a fantastic feeling to feel I have been some part of that process.

I’m looking forward to D-Day 2013 and from the tweets and emails I’ve received, I think St Paul’s are too.

So it’s October and you may still consider it far too early to be talking about Christmas, but with the supermarkets brimming with festive fayre in the aisles, it’s actually the very last chance for us to put together Christmas viral games and festive digital marketing campaigns for our clients.

But why would you invest in a Christmas game for your brand? Here are a few reasons why we think (and other customers tell us) they make sense: Read more