It’s been a hectic January for Facebook marketers! Following the huge announcement last December about reduced Reach, Facebook announced the seeming demise of Page text posts earlier last week.

Behind all the buzz, we’ve put together 7 key Facebook news this month, many of which hit the headlines and could turn out to be BIG for your business.

1. Facebook adds Trending to its sidebar

Facebook made the headlines again this month when it announced the rollout of Facebook Trending. We already see how this is a very popular feature on Twitter, but following Facebook’s epic #hashtag failure, I will hesitate to call this a smart move. Besides, we’re already seeing a lot of negative feedback.

On a closer look, it seems that users demand personalization of the feature; this is something users have come to expect now on Facebook. Hyper-targeting and 1-to-1 customisation have become the norm.

Personally, I believe that Facebook Trending will catch on very well, and glue more users to the site, initiating more virtual social interaction through clicks, likes, comments, and shares. Overall, a good piece of news for you and I.

 

2. Facebook wants you to enter your information

Photo credits to http://readwrite.com

Good news for businesses and users who often search for people or stuff on Facebook. Facebook recently began prompting users to fill in their information, and we hope this will improve its targeting and Graph search usefulness.

 

3. Facebook to kill sponsored stories

In short, Facebook will stop allowing you to create sponsored stories, beginning 9th April. But sponsored stories created as a result of social interaction on your posts will continue. For more details, read Jon’s comprehensive update here.

 

4. Teens are leaving Facebook by the millions

When news broke that “teens are leaving Facebook by the millions”, everyone jumped on the bandwagon and some even went as far as to predict the demise of Facebook in 2014. The only problems were

1. How irresponsible and misleading the copwriters (journalists) were
2. How gullible online netizens are
   

Moving on, I would like to urge everyone to calm down when they hear earth-shattering news.

As if this was not already bad enough, I also covered 5 worst pieces of advice I heard about Facebook this month - read and clear up your misconceptions!

 

5. Facebook to mobile users: Invite your friends to use Messenger

Allfacebook shared that some Facebook mobile users are seeing prompts to invite friends who have not yet installed its Messenger app to do so. I think this could be big.

Facebook wants a pie of the chat app market, which has seen large-scale adoption among a lot of people, especially under 25s. But what’s the potential of chat apps?

Already we have seen several monetization attempts on chat apps (which is seen to offer more privacy than open social platforms), such as Line’s Maybelline flash sale which sold out in 5 minutes. In short, chat apps are the forerunners of mobile commerce.

Facebook is in many ways working to improve its ad offerings. Coupled with Graph Search, users getting used to the ads instead of installing Adblock Plus, I think Facebook’s hyper-targeting could help make its future ad offerings even more effective.

Hopefully, Facebook is able to accelerate its Messenger and Instagram Direct usage rates, and it will be good news for all Facebook marketers.

[UPDATE: Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced on Tuesday that Messenger grew 70% in Q4 2013]

 

6. Ability to edit scheduled post in your Activity Log

This feature should have come sooner. This was not possible before and it brought about much inconvenience. Previously, to edit a post which you scheduled, you have to delete the post and schedule a new one. With this update, simply go to your Activity Log and click on the arrow at the top right corner of each scheduled post to make a change.

 

7. Facebook testing Q & A feature for Pages again

Allfacebook reported earlier this month that Facebook is testing Q&As feature for Pages. This was an old feature on Facebook back in 2010. There’s not much follow-up news, but if the feature is revived, it should certainly be due to demand. Expect more tips to be provided on how to make use of this feature when it’s indeed rolled out.

 

Did I miss out on any important news? Share with me below!