Facebook's New Features and Product Launches
In February, Facebook launched Product Ads, a set of tools designed to help businesses promote multiple products or their entire product catalog, across all the devices their customers use. Marketers are now able to upload their product catalog and create targeted campaigns based on specific products or audiences, or they can let Facebook do the work and generate “relevant” campaigns automatically. Read the original announcement and more about the new tools here.
Shortly after, Facebook launched the Ads Manager mobile app, which gives business owners stats about the total reach, engagement, and cost per engagement of their ads. The mobile app was launched to make life easier for the 800k advertisers and the 2 million businesses using Facebook advertising.
A few days ago, Facebook launched suicide prevention tools. Users are now able to report posts to Facebook that show their friends are dealing with suicidal thoughts. A third party then reviews the post to determine whether to reach out to the user with advice and support, but also to give the option for the user to reach out to a friend. Rob Boyle, Facebook’s product manager said about this particular option, "One of the things that really improves outcomes is increased social connectedness, that's what we do, is help people connect and help people interact." Facebook has partnered up with mental health organizations, such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Save.org, Now Matters Now, Forefront, and others, to ascertain that they use the appropriate sensitivity and language when speaking with potentially suicidal people.
In other news, Facebook has recently changed its gender options even more by giving users complete freedom in self identifying. In early February, Facebook had updated its gender options to include a long list of options but has since opted for a custom field that allows users to choose for themselves.
With these new features Facebook is attempting to remedy some of the social and business challenges its faced in the past. However, for users and business owners Facebook doesn't have to be the end game, there's more to social media. Facebook became the space where you could find everyone and their grandmothers (literally), but this space is no longer a free for all as evidenced by the death of organic reach on the social network. Social communities can now easily form their own online communities and custom social networks, and we can show you how.
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