I’ve built a quiz system using HTML,CSS & JavaScript (jQuery) so that it can be used both via a desktop computer and a mobile device such as an iPhone. The idea is that at the end of the quiz users receive a score that they can share with other Facebook users. This then encourages other users to play the quiz when seeing the status update on their friends page.

Now I’m going to perform a series of experiments where I change certain user journeys within the app. For example my first test was to have a share function after the quiz was played so the users can share their score. But if I add a Facebook Like button to the beginning of the quiz and only let them play if they click this button then hopefully it will increase the amount of times the quiz will appear on someones status feed – but this will be at a cost of drop-offs (people who are unwilling to like the quiz to play and exit the quiz).

Another option will be to have a like or share button before they are allowed to see their score. This way they have already played the quiz and have some vested interest in wanting to know how they did. So in theory they will be more willing to click the like button.

To add to this experiment I’m going to see try and find out what type of quiz/questionnaire Facebook users find more appealing to visit or even complete.

The point of this exercise to to work out the best way of gaining user interaction or interest with an app, to get the most possible amount of shares/likes and eventually push users on to the brand or product the app represents – which could be a Fan Page, website, product, or just general brand awareness.

As a Facebook developer I find this study highly intriguing and I’m looking forward to finding out the results and then in turn helping my clients in making the most out of their Facebook campaigns.

The first instance of the quiz is here – https://apps.facebook.com/thesocialquiz/. It was built in a couple of hours and there are still a couple of bugs but it’ll do for the moment!

I’ve been the using HTML5 video and audio tags to present multimedia to users with a Flash fallback options (for those IE 8 and below users!) which is a great and simple way of integrating videos and music into an application (and website). There’s some quirky ways the mobile Safari overlays its controls (which was a hurdle when overlaying images and buttons on top of the video) but it works really well.

I’m looking into the HTML5 Canvas tabs at the moment and I’ve started to mimic the Window’s Metro interface that has recently been rolled out onto the XBox 360 dashboard and their phones. Each widget/icon is a canvas that pulls in dynamically the image, text or icon to display and clicking on the widget will either present more content or change the state of the widget. It’s pretty cool!

During the last couple of months of 2011 I was doing some great apps for companies like EasyJet, PlayStation and Waitrose – Agencies are always coming up with new ideas to interact with their Facebook Fans and require developers like myself to implement these ideas (often in extremely tight timelines!). I’m looking forward to see what 2012 brings in terms of new developments and cool ideas that need to be translated into workable applications!

As a Facebook Application developer it’s great that more and more businesses are realising the opportunties to be made on the platform. Facebook are implementing a complete move to the https protocol for their applications so I’ve been supplying secure applications in preparation for their planned move in October.

I plan to spend part of my research time next month after my holiday to look into LinkedIn as a developer and what opportunities there are for companies. Facebook is great but it’s harder for business to business companies to see any benefit in spending money in an environment that is very consumer based. LinkedIn may provide the solution for B2B companies to engage in social media while targeting other businesses.

Also, I hope to write more posts and create a coding resource too. I’ve done so much work with CodeIgnitor now I’ve come to love this framework and want to big it up as much as possible!

Businesses all over the UK are now starting to realise the potential of using Facebook Fan Pages to communicate with their client base and keep their brand and products/services present in the users daily activity. Whether this is via the Facebook news feed or getting the users to actively participate in custom built Facebook Applications.

These applications should be designed to reward the user and not just be a blatant attempt by businesses to advertise their products or services. They should be fun and engaging and most of all be entertaining enough so users want to pass the experience of the application on to their friends and contacts.

Facebook marketing is coming out of its infancy and businesses are starting to come up with some really great and fun ways to engage users. Starbucks are pointing a lot of there new online advertising towards their Facebook Fan Page. Also, we’re seeing a lot of companies offering special offers via their fan page.

The next step we are going to see a lot of is shopping through the Facebook environment as businesses start to develop Facebook online e-commerce stores, where the whole process of browsing and purchasing products is done within a Facebook application. There are already some pioneers out there and a couple of white label solutions available too.

As a Facebook application developer I am really excited about the future of businesses on Facebook, and hope to see some great ideas being developed by companies on their fan pages.

With the rise of social networks I’ve found myself at the forefront of Facebook application development. These Facebook applications are usually integrated with companies Facebook Fan Pages and are used in partnership with web and media campaigns to help bring products or services to users. Social networks give companies and advertisers a great way of motivating the public to help spread their message by creating interactive and involving content that the user will actually find fun or useful.

Whether it’s Facebook competitions or interactive Flash games and applications, I can help companies bring users to their Fan pages and websites for lower budgets then larger web design agencies. I can also advise advertisers and campaign managers on the benefits of using social media and how to make their integrated social media campaign more effective and provide them with another means to present product and services to their customers and potential customers.

This year I will be concentrating on Facebook e-commerce solutions, I aim to create an easily customisable Facebook store that companies can integrate with their Fan Pages and gives Facebook users the ability to view and purchase products completely within the Facebook environment.

Stay tuned for further updates!

Once users had entered the competition they were presented with social sharing options enabling them to share the competition information and link with their friends. The competition and data entry mechanic was performed using FBJS & Ajax so the user would always stay within the Vodafone Fan Page tab.

I also provided the front end tab design as well as a supporting back-end administration panel where admin users could view entries and download all entrants in a CSV document.

At the end of the competition the tab would automatically replace the quiz question and data collection form with a thank you message informing the user the competition had ended.

The competition was extremely successful and had thousands of entries. The winner was announced via the Fan Page status feed.

For the Haven project they had 6 Adwords Clients containing around 50 Adwords Campaigns. In these campaigns were even more Adgroups (1,300 live and paused Adgroups in total) sometimes containing over 100 keyword criterions.

Dynamad runs through every single Adgroup and updates the parameters in the advert for every single keyword/criterion. In this case it was for a daily countdown to the end of a special offer period. So each day Dynamad will automatically run and update all the adverts with the new countdown figure.

This is pretty impressive stuff and Arena Quantum (the digital arm of Arena Media) have this running for several of their big named clients. This is in the form of countdowns like the Haven example, or continuous updates as for FlyThomasCook which updates ads with the cheapest flight at the very moment according to the departure airport and destination airport on the advert!

I’ve also recently built a new module for Dynamad which Arena Quantum are using for ESPN. This modules actually builds adverts automatically based on ESPN’s latest news! It knows which sports celebrities & topics to look out for, and builds the ads based on them.

It must have been an amazing project to work on and I’d love to know how it was all done! I think I’m going to pick apart the scripts later!

You can view the whole thing here – The Wilderness Downtown.

Use these files when starting a new project – they are designed to reduce the visual design in any browser to its most basic state.  This will help ease the usual cross browser issues and utter contempt you should hold for Internet Explorer and it’s non-standard html/css rendering!

The geotargeting tool is only a small part of the overall Google Adwords API interface system I’ve been building. As discussed previously on this blog it can be used to add real time parameters to live PPC ads, and now PPC bid projections for individual keywords using Google’s Bid Landscape.