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Some people have used Facebook ads to drive traffic the way paid search ads do,  it’s no cost effective.  Others use ads that encourage target audience to Like their Facebook page.

Facebook introduced Sponsored Stories,  Facebook’s targeted ad service that lets us use Facebook members’ comments and actions in ads that appear on their friends’ Facebook pages. Example, suppose I post on Facebook that some of my students enjoyed reading a book available at  xyzbooks.com,  the owners of this site will use my comments in an ad that would appear on my friends or colleagues main Facebook page, known as a news feed.

By launching a sponsored stories ad campaign, ads could get a boost in ads’ click-through rates as compared to self-service Facebook ads.  Using posts in ads enables businesses to reach people who might otherwise not know them.

Using a mix of self-service ads, which used to be called Marketplace Ads, and Sponsored Stories, the businesses can get
thousands of  Likes, and roughly half of the their new customers will come via Facebook.

Facebook followed Sponsored Stories with more changes this fall that draw on its greatest asset—the voluminous detail it has about the opinions and preferences of hundreds of millions of consumers. The social network introduced a new ad format that, for instance, when appearing on your Facebook page indicates that your friend xyz  Liked the advertised brand while also including a brand message. Facebook news feed redesign puts posts at the top of a Facebook user’s news feed, including posts from businesses that draw a lot of attention on the social network.

When an ad features a friend’s endorsement it adds an element of value and trust. Consumers who view an ad featuring social context, like a friend Liking a retailer, are more likely to recall the ad.

Facebook calls “social context” the pairing of ads with what consumers have said or done on the social network. Unless a consumer specifically clicks on his Account Settings and selects “Pair my social actions with ads for No One,” Facebook reserves the right to highlight consumers’ actions in ads.

The idea behind Sponsored Stories is that the ads enable marketers to highlight consumers’ actions, such as clicking Like on a retailer’s page. Each ad features the profile picture of the consumer whose action is highlighted, along with his name.

Facebook launched a new ad format, which it calls a Premium ad unit. A Premium ad makes use of social context, such
as if a friend Liked a Facebook post from the advertiser.  The ads appear on the right side of a consumer’s home page, next to the news feed. At the top of the ad is the label “Sponsored” followed by a message noting that a friend Likes a piece of content or a brand. Beneath that is messaging from the advertiser itself.

Unlike Sponsored Stories, which amplify consumers’ actions, Premium ads enable advertisers to deliver their own messages. And the ads do not appear in the news feed, where they can be glossed over as a consumer reads the often-voluminous posts from his Facebook friends

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As competition is heating up online deals and coupons are getting easier to find. To compete, online businesses are offering free shipping on some online orders and even special parking space. Bigger online businesses are offering coupons and other incentives to encourage customers to spend more.

Mobile deals easier than ever to get it on, too.  Discounts are popping on packaging and displays: all you need is a smart phone to scan the codes. Some smart phone apps even use GPS technology to determine customer location  to send deal alerts when they are near the store.

Coupon sites and Apps: The biggest selection of coupon sites are found online. Sites such as Coupons.com and SmartSource.com usually have up to 100 deals at any time, compared with no more than 30 coupons in newspaper circulars. They also have new mobile versions that let you scroll through offers and pick the coupons the customers want from their phone without downloading special  software or apps. More stores and manufacturers are loading their websites and smart-phone apps with great deals, tracks items and prices from the latest store circulars, then cross-references all possible manufacturers’ coupons with the circulars and shows the bottom line for each item. These apps track down coupons in real time. When the customer creates the shopping list, items that have online coupons are highlighted.

Handheld Scanners:are used for ringing up products while shopping. Customers using this device get extra discounts based on where they are in the store. Another way to get more discounts by looking for kiosks in front of stores. Scan the loyalty card and offers are loaded directly onto the customer’s card. The discounts are applied at checkout when the products are bought.

Store Sites: There are  dozens of sites and apps for finding and managing coupons. Customers  check websites  and circulars  for list builders and downloadable apps of stores where they shop weekly. And ask stores whether it accepts  other stores coupons.

Loyalty cards: Customers can download coupons from a retailers website to a card. Instead of sorting coupons at checkout, they only need to swipe out their loyalty card. Loyalty cards help retailers track customers spending habits, information they use to gauge which coupons and deals to offer.

Groupon offers subscribers deals through their store loyalty cards. The discount is taken off at checkout, so no coupon printing is required. The have money-back deals if customers buy a minimum number of products from a single manufacturer and use a store loyalty card.

Social Network offers: Customers can use Foursquare on their phone to get deal alerts when driving near a store. Others use Facebook to post coupons as well as specials at the store closest to their Zip code.

QR codes: Another way companies are linking customers to savings is through quick response codes  or QR codes. They appear as bar codes on products or store displays. The deals can be accessed by scanning them with an app loaded smart phone.

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A message from one of your friends appears in your in box, sent via a social network site that you use regularly. The message promises a big deal and points to a Web site you’ve never heard of. You click the link—and the next thing you know, your PC is misdirected to a phishing page that steals your log-in details or to a drive-by download site that infects your system with a password-stealing Trojan horse. And your friend says that she never sent you the message. This is a security threat in social networking.

Whether the culprit is a fake LinkedIn profile page that serves up URLs leading to dangerous Web sites or a bogus Twitter message that purportedly comes from a friend, social networks are rapidly becoming the newest medium for malware attacks. As operating systems and applications became harder to hack directly, online criminals came to realize that it was much easier to fool people into clicking bad links, opening dangerous files, and running malicious software. They also figured out that the most effective place to exploit the trust that naturally exists between friends and colleagues was within the mechanisms of the online social networks themselves.

By now, most Internet users are savvy enough to recognize spam e-mail. But what about a spam tweet that seems to come from someone in your circle of friends and links to a page that looks almost exactly like the one you use to log in to Twitter? A week may go by, and suddenly the data thieves who now control your account begin sending messages with URLs—some of which perform drive-by downloads and infect the recipients’ PCs with malware—to everyone in your social network.

Facebook and MySpace users have already had to deal with a number of worms and other nasties that are designed to spread independently of any action taken by the account holder.

If you think that details of your social networking account may have been stolen or compromised in some other way, report your suspicions to the site’s support team immediately. Change your password frequently, and avoid clicking message links that purport to transfer you back to the social network site. Instead, to get back to your account, type the site’s address directly into your browser

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With the number of Facebook’s  users increasing everyday, businesses of all types are realizing they have a big opportunity to make money with Facebook the world’s largest social network.

It is important to understand that Facebook is not your traditional e-commerce channel and should not be used as a direct
marketing tactic. The hundreds of millions of Facebook members have joined to share their personal stories through updates, images and videos within their social network not to buy products. Utilizing the social network as a sales channel is not a bad thing but should be handled carefully. Aggressive behavior does not pay off.

Develop a strategy for connecting with your customer base. Your strategy should be about quality not quantity of people that “like” your page. Taking the time to develop relationships with your fans, creating engaging content and measuring results are the three essential steps to an impressive return on investment.

-Engage with those who like you page: Start with an interesting and compelling Facebook Page that differentiates your business from the competition. Apps are a good way for any business serious about marketing on Facebook to create a unique experience that helps you stand out. From sharing videos to contests, Facebook Apps are among the most used features on the platform. Add in the ability to share with friends and a strong Facebook App can have a huge impact.

Creating a separate tab that helps business owners showcase their products or services is the right approach. Constantly posting your products on your Facebook  wall will turn people off, resulting in a sharp increase in the number of people “unliking” your page and, therefore, dismissing your brand. Creating a low-risk high-reward option for your customer is important, so always think like your  customers when implementing any new Facebook idea. There are thousands of amazing apps on Facebook and visiting the Facebook App Directory is a good place to start.

-Engaging content: Facebook uses the news feed optimization formula  to decide what content shows up in a user’s top
news feed, this formula  is tied to Facebook’s current news options (top news vs. most recent) .

Facebook news feed optimization has become a new type of  SEO. If you like or comment on updates from one particular
Facebook page often, you are likely to see that business’ status update in your top news feed (the default setting) on a regular basis. The formula called EdgeRank, looks at affinity score (how often the user interacts with the page), weight (how many comments or likes a post has), and time decay (how recent that update was posted). In many respects, this is not unlike link building.

If you post content on your page that does not follow the above formula you are wasting your time, as updates will not be seen by your fans. Before you press the share button, reread the post and make sure you are asking for engagement. For example, if you are thinking of launching a new product, ask the opinion of your customers.

If you are just starting out and have very few people following your page, Facebook advertising is a great approach to reach the right people at the right time. Advertisers can request that ads are served based on what your customers have said they liked in their profile. Example, you can promote a new brand to people on their birthdays, based on information from those user profiles. Before launch, Facebook will even show the number of estimated reach so as to not waste marketing dollars advertising to those less likely to engage.

-Performance: Your Facebook Page, Facebook Insights offers valuable customer information. After reviewing age, gender and country of residence you can enhance or change your current Facebook strategy. Using this data, you can decide which content works best, the audience you are currently reaching and where improvements can be made. In the end, it’s all about making social connections with your target audience.

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Spaming in social networking sites is a serious problem.  Criminals, as well as direct marketers, continue to clog mailboxes with unsolicited bulk e-mails such as spam and phishing in the hope of financial gain. So far their strategy is straightforward, namely to send out a vast numbers of  unsolicited e-mails in order to maximize profit on the tiny fraction that falls for their scams. Their pool of target e-mail addresses is normally based upon data harvested with web crawlers or trojans, sometimes even including plain dictionary-based guessing of valid targets. Social networking sites (SNSs) might change the playing field of spam attacks in the near future. SNSs contain a pool of sensitive information which can be misused for spam messages, namely contact information (email addresses, instant messaging accounts, etc.) and personal information which can be used to improve the believability of spam messages. A successful extraction of sensitive information from SNSs would result in spam attacks that are based upon a pool of verified e-mail addresses. Thus messages may have higher conversion rates, increasing the success rate of spam.

Gaining access to the pool of personal information stored in SNSs and impersonating a social network user poses a non-trivial challenge. Information extraction from SNSs introduced elaborate methods such as the inference of a user’s social graph from their public listings or cross-platform profile cloning attacks. The leakage of personal information from these platforms creates a remarkable dilemma as this information forms the ideal base for further attacks. The main obstacle for large-scale spam attacks on basis of SNSs are the various access protection measures providers offer to keep sensitive information private or at least limit access to a closed circle of friends. Our friend-in-the-middle attack overcomes this obstacle by hijacking HTTP sessions on the network layer, which the majority of SNSs
providers fail to secure.

FRIEND-IN-THE-MIDDLE (FITM) ATTACKS: friend-in-the-middle attacks as active eavesdropping attacks against social networking sites. Our FITM attack is based on the missing protection of the communication link between users and social networking providers. By hijacking session cookies, it becomes possible to impersonate the victim and interact with the social network without proper authorization. While active eavesdropping attacks against web services are well studied and known for decades, these attacks have a severe impact in combination with social networking services. SNSs session hijacking attacks enable more sophisticated attacks on SNSs, which we outline in the following. Moreover, SNSs providers are responsible for a major share of today’s world-wide-web traffic.

(A)HTTP Session Hijacking Attacks on SNSs. As a precondition the attacker needs to have access to the communication between the SNS and the user. This can be achieved either passively (e.g., by monitoring unencrypted wireless networks) or actively (e.g. by ARP-spoofing on a LAN). The adversary then simply clones the HTTP header containing the authentication cookies and can interact with the social network, unbeknownst to the SNS operator or user.

As a precondition the attacker needs to have access to the communication between the SNS and the user. This can be achieved either passively (e.g., by monitoring unencrypted wireless networks) or actively (e.g. by ARP-spoofing on a LAN). The adversary then simply clones the HTTP header containing the authentication cookies and can interact with the social network, unbeknownst to the SNS operator or user.

One can observe that if HTTPS is used at all, today’s biggest SNSs provider use it solely to protect the credentials during login. As with traditional eavesdropping attacks, the attacker is able to use the web service to its full extent from the victim’s point of view. However in the case of our FITM attacks, further scenarios become available, which are specific to SNSs:

-Friend injection to infiltrate a closed network

-Application injection to extract profile content

- Social engineering to exploit collected information.

The rudimentary security and privacy protection measures of SNSs available to users are based on the notion of “friendship”, which means that sensitive information is made available only to a limited set of accounts (friends) specified by the SNS user. Once an attacker is able to hijack a social networking session, she is able to add herself as a friend on behalf of the victim and thus infiltrate the target’s closed network. The injected friend could then be misused to access profile information or to post messages within the infiltrated network of friends.

By installing a custom third-party application, written and under the control of the attacker, it is possible to access the data in an automated fashion. Among other things, an application has access to sensitive information (birthday, demographic information, pictures, interests, etc.) and in case of most SNSs also to information of friends of the application user. Third-party applications such as online games have become a popular amusement within SNSs, and hiding a malicious application without any activity visible to the user is possible. An attacker might install the application, take all the data needed in an automated fashion and remove the application afterwards. This would be completely undetectable to the user and most likely to the SNSs providers as well. Whereas social engineers traditionally relied upon context-information gathered through dumpster diving or quizzing people over the phone, with FITM attacks the context-information harvesting process becomes automated. We thus claim that FITM attacks allow sophisticated social engineering attacks. Two such social engineering attacks based on information extraction from social networking sites are context-aware spam and social phishing, which we describe in the following.

(B)Context-Aware Spam. Context-aware spam can be generated from data harvested with FITM attacks, increasing the effectiveness of the spam. Three context-aware spam attacks which might be misused: relationship-based attacks, unshared-attribute attacks, as well as shared-attribute attacks. While the first attack is based on relationship information, the two remaining variations use content extracted from social networking sites such as geographic information or a user’s birthday.

(C)Social-Phishing. Phishing is a common threat on the Internet where an attacker tries to lure victims into entering sensitive information like passwords or credit card numbers into a faked website under the control of the attacker. It has been shown that social phishing, which includes some kind of “social” information specific to the victim, can be extremely effective compared to regular phishing. For example such information might be that the message appears to be sent from a person within the social environment of the victim, like a friend or a colleague from work.

With automated data extraction from social networks via FITM attacks, a vast amount of further usable data becomes available to attackers. Prior conversations within the social network like private messages, comments or wall posts could be used to deduce the language normally used for message exchange between the victim and the spam target. For example, a phishing target might find it very suspicious if the victim sends a message in English if they normally communicate in French. Another example are extracted pictures that could be included in the spam and phishing emails to increase their authenticity. Extracted pictures could for example be used to send invitations to shared “photo albums”, including a link which promises more pictures given that a user enters his social networking credentials.

Social Spam Attacks: Spam and phishing messages via FITM attacks can be delivered using one of various approaches.
First, the social network itself might be used for sending the spam, e.g. by writing the message to other users’ walls, or by sending it via private messages. However, if used on a large scale this approach is most likely to get detected by SNSs providers who already implemented a number of anti spam strategies to protect their networks. Out-of-bound messages mean that traditional emails or other forms of sending messages besides the SNS are used to deliver the spam and phishing messages. The traditional email spam is enabled through the availability of real email addresses users make available to their friends. Hence, if the spam attack is carried out over email instead of the SNS platform, these malicious messages cannot be detected by the SNSs providers.

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Google+ social network  home page just like Facebook consists largely of a news feed or a ‘Stream’. The Stream is organized a little bit differently to Facebook though- stuff that you’ve hit +1 on commented on previously will rise to the top of your feed if there is a new comment. So Google knows that you are interested in becoming more visible.

Like Facebook, you can make a status update, or share photos, video and your location. Unlike Facebook, you don’t have to do it on your own profile to make an update. There is a drop-down ‘Share’ menu in the upper right corner which allows you to share from any Google+ page. So you don’t have to open a new tab to share something, or navigate from the page you are using.

There is another menu on upper right for notifications. This works similarly to Facebook in that it changes colour when you have a notification, and drops down when you click on it. Unlike facebook, you can reply to comments within that menu.  So you don’t have to navigate away from whatever you are doing.

Circles: Google  reckons that ;people have different “social circles”. When you add someone on Google+, you put them into at least one circle using a drag and drop down system. Sometimes you might want someone in more than one different circle,  ‘family and ‘friends’. You just need to drag and drop into a second circle.

Categorizing people into groups can be done on Facebook, but it is hidden within Facebook’s  settings. Google+ makes creating those filters easy, so you don’t have to share anything with anyone you don’t want to. Every time you share something on your Stream, you get to choose which people to filter in or out.

Sparks: You can search for anything that interests you, and any Google News that applies to that interest will show up in your Sparks news feed. In short, Google+ is doing some simple keyword and tag search

Hangout: is Google’s video chat feature. When you start a Hangout session on Google+ , it starts you default webcam and broadcasts  video to your circles. It opens up in a pop-up window.  You can invite people to join the video chat.

Google+ Android App: Android users can download an app to assist them while they are away from their keyboard. It has just five icons on the main screen- Stream,  Huddle, Photos, Profile and circles. There is a bar across the bottom of the screen that tells you if you have any notifications.

Using Huddle from the Android app is a handy way to communicate with a group of people- it is basically a reply to all email function.

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With over 600 million members or “friends,” Facebook is the most powerful of the online social networks. Online
retailers are discovering new ways to harness this power not only to increase their sales, but also to infl uence buyers through the virtual word-of-mouth that the Facebook Like button enables.

The way it works is simple. Individuals, companies, or groups create Fan pages on Facebook where they can post updates. Facebook members can become a fan by simply clicking the Like button located on the fan page. Fans then receive updates posted by the page creator.

Companies have begun to integrate this feature into their own web sites, allowing them more exposure through this social network.  is is an efficient way for retailers and manufacturers to let their customers and Facebook fans know about new releases of products, events, and special off ers and coupons.  e added benefit to retailers is that anyone connected to the person who Liked the item will also be exposed to the product when they see the Facebook News Feed of the fan of the brand.

Up until a few months ago, retailers only went as far as allowing members to become fans of a brand as a whole. Lately, however, a new trend has emerged. Merchants such as Levi’s and Amazon now use the Like feature at a product level. How does this work and what does it mean for you as an online retailer? Let’s look at Levis.com. In the screenshot example below, Levi’s has integrated Facebook’s Like feature into the product information for each listed item.  e jeans maker also shows how many people have Liked each pair of jeans to the right of the Like button. By displaying the number of members who Like a pair of jeans, Levi’s is betting that consumers will be more influenced to look at and buy those jeans.

During an internal usability study conducted in May of 2010 with online shoppers across various age groups who had Facebook accounts, it was discovered that the Like feature did influence members’ shopping experience. Observations showed that jeans with a higher number of Likes got more views from these online shoppers than jeans with fewer Likes, at least initially.  While ultimately select a pair of jeans based on their personal style, they also spent time investigating the products with more Likes to find out why they were more popular.

In order to use this feature, Facebook members must allow Levi’s to use some of their Facebook information, such as:
their friends’ birthdays, th e display of their friends’ Facebook profile pictures on the Levi’s web site if they Like a product, and  Information posted on their Facebook Wall when they select to Like and/or comment on something.

By having access to this account information, Levi’s can alert its online shoppers about friends’ birthdays as a means to promote gift purchases.  And in hopes of influencing a shopper’s buying decision, it can also show shoppers images of their friends who have Liked or commented  on certain products.  is  where the true power of marketing through social media shines.

And when viewing a friend’s Facebook page or status update in News Feed, members can see if a friend has Liked or commented on something through the Levi’s web site. At the top of the next page is an example screenshot of what
would typically appear on a fan’s Facebook Wall if he had Liked and commented on a Levi’s product.

Members seeing a product on their Facebook Profile pages when they commented on a Liked product, as well as seeing a product they simply Liked.  These same consumers also said that if they saw a pair of jeans that a Facebook friend Liked or commented on, they would be more inclined to click on that product, driving them back to the Levi’s site.

 Consumers who may have never considered visiting the Levi’s web site are now exposed to and driven to the site
via a single product they saw on a friend’s Facebook profi le page or within the Facebook News Feed. If only 0.25% of Facebook’s 600 million friends visited the Levi’s site, that would still amount to an additional 1.5 million visits.

So what’s the downside?  at depends on what a consumer is comfortable with people knowing about her. In the case of Levi’s, the one drawback we heard from testers was that they may not necessarily want to display the types of clothes they Liked for fear of criticism.  The main deterrents when it came to announcing their clothing styles were body type and size, color and style.

Enter Amazon.com.  In late July 2010, Amazon partnered with Facebook to create a personalized shopping experience for consumers based on their Facebook Likes and their friends’ Likes. Amazon accesses a customer’s Facebook account, with the customer’s permission, to gather information .

Once a customer has allowed Amazon to access this information, the retailer uses it to recommend products based on the customer’s Likes and her friends’ Likes. Aside from displaying the friends’ profile pictures for products they’ve liked, Amazon also shows friends with upcoming birthdays. Based on their Likes, Amazon provides gift suggestions for these friends.

This type of integration allows Amazon to gain key insights into how product sales relate to social recommendations—a metric which, up to this point, has not been easily measured. Based on this data retailers can build models to show how
fi nancially valuable it is to have members Like a product or brand and truly gauge the impact of social network marketing.

Overall, this marriage between social networks and online retailers has a bright future. As more people use Facebook to
keep up with friends, trends and gossip, Facebook’s potential as a commerce tool for online retailers will only continue
to grow. So consider how your retail site could benefi t from integrating Facebook’s Like feature and test the user experience before deploying it to make certain your customers understand and appreciate the feature. It could impact your site more than you think.