This is thanks to the new Timeline Apps feature, which allows a new set of apps to grab and post activity from other websites and services into your Facebook Timeline.

For example, if you install the Words With Friends app, all your Words With Friends account activity appears in Facebook.

As of this writing, 80 apps are available, but Facebook has promised to release even more. The apps already available include some big names, including Hulu, Yahoo! News, eBay, Zynga, Rotten Tomatoes and TripAdvisor. A full list is below.

To install Timeline apps, first you need to activate Timeline. Here’s how to do that.

Then visit the Timeline Apps page to find apps you want to use. Each app has an install page that shows you what the app does and allows you to adjust its privacy settings.

Not all apps post to Timeline automatically. For some apps, you turn on the “post to Timeline” feature right from the app install page. Others require you to enable from within your Facebook Account Settings.

Go to Account Settings >Apps to manage all your apps. You can set the privacy of each app at any time from there.

In addition to the apps’ overall privacy setting, you can control privacy post by post as well. Click the X in the upper right corner of any app post to show or hide it in Timeline.

Not sure if there are any apps you’d want to use? Here’s a list of the first 80 apps available. See if your favorite site is here.

MUSIC
Saavn, Turntable.fm, Earbits, Rhapsody, Songza, Jelli, MOG, Rdio, iHeartRadio, Slacker, Spotify

NEWS
Wetpaint, WSJ Social, USA Today + Me, BuzzFeed, Rockmelt, The Daily, Yahoo! News, Washington Post Social Reader, The Independent, The Guardian, InHindi, IBNLive with Friends, Joinsmsn, Digg

GIVING
FundRazr, Causes, Artez Interactive

TRAVEL
Gogobot, TripAdvisor, Wipolo, Where I’ve Been, Airbnb

FOOD
Urbanspoon, Snooth, Foodspotting, Foodily, Yummly

SHOPPING / FASHION
Polyvore, Oodle, Lyst, Sneakpeeq, Pinterest, GiftRocket, Payvment, Living Social, Pose, LAX World, GiantNerd, Fab

FITNESS
Runkeeper, MapMyFitness

ENTERTAINMENT
Goodreads, Ticketmaster, Snapstick, ScoreBig, Ticketfly, StubHub, Soundcloud, Words With Friends, Zeebox, Castleville, Hulu, Dailymotion, Bubble Island, Cinemur, Kobo, Diamond Dash, Draw My Thing, Rotten Tomatoes,

OTHER
[s]edition, BranchOut, Autotrader, Artfinder, Apssfire, Grockit, Ford – Mustang, Ford – Grab-a-Badge, Chegg, Color

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/28/how-to-get-most-out-facebooks-new-timeline-apps/#ixzz1kmBdBO00

The idea behind Timeline is a visually appealing story of someone’s life. Facebook has a section on its website introducing the new update with the phrase, “Tell your life story with a new kind of profile.”

The idea was originally introduced in September 2011 and made available to developers. More than a million people signed up as of early December 2011 for beta access and gave feedback on the new profile. On Dec. 15, 2011, it was announced Timeline was available to everyone.

According to a blog post Tuesday, “Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story. Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline.”

Opting in gives a user a seven-day preview period to fix up the timeline before it is published. However, the timeline goes live automatically after the seven days if a user doesn’t choose to make it live before the preview period is over.

A cover photo, which is a big photo across the top of a user’s profile, may be the first noticeable change with a switchover to Timeline.

As the user scroll down he sees all the main posts and life events that happened during the year being scrolled through. These include photos, friend connections, places visited, pages liked and more.

Users can add important life events to their timeline and also have the option to hide posts, giving control over what to highlight during a certain time period.

If someone wants to see certain activity that happened on a certain day, he can click on “activity log” under his cover photo. That shows all activity that can be sorted by year but cannot be searched by date. As of now, a user has to scroll to the certain date he wants to look at.

There has been backlash for every Facebook profile change, and Timeline will not be an exception. Brian Carter, an Internet marketing and social media expert, does not think people will delete their profiles.

“It’s the typical freak out every time it changes,” Carter said. “One of the complaints I’ve heard [is that] people think it looks like MySpace. I think it looks classy. The cover photo is an opportunity to show people more about your life. People didn’t really leave MySpace until there was a better option, everybody is on it [Facebook] and it’s only growing.

“The other thing about the Timeline: How often do you go to your friend’s pages?” he said. “Most of the time they’re on newsfeed or a group. It’s gonna be cool but we don’t spend a heck of a lot of time on other people’s pages.”

Additionally, Facebook is making new apps available to users to incorporate into their Timelines. This goes along with the new Open Graph platform, which was introduced in September. According to Facebook, this platform is how Facebook introduces new features such as photos and places.

Now, Open Graph has been opened to third party apps, including 60 new apps announced last week, such as Pinterest, a virtual pinboard website. Carter thinks the success of these apps will depend on what people create.

Facebook is a networking site that constantly grows and changes.

In a 2008 interview with The New York Times, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg discussed previous profile changes. Before the first big change in September 2006, users had to search the pages of their friends for information. But then Zuckerberg introduced “News Feed,” now an accepted feature. At the time, there was a backlash. People’s information on their profiles was now on everyone’s home pages — everything from break-ups to the embarrassing pictures from the party the night before.

A group was formed against the News Feed and by the end of the first day, the group had 284,000 members. In response, Zuckerberg decided to add a privacy feature to the News Feed though he kept the News Feed active because he thought people would get used to it. He started to get positive feedback after the initial shock.

Soon after the News Feed was introduced, Facebook was opened to the public rather than just students and the amount of users grew to million.

There are numerous pages and groups against the new profile, plus negative comments on the blog post announcing the switch. The most popular comment is from Facebook user Mohamed Isham, “Old One is Better!” with more than 2,000 “likes.”

There are also those who embrace the change. As of today, more than 1.9 million people have “liked” the page introducing Timeline.

Mike Parlitsis, a college senior from Somers, N.Y., switched over to Timeline in October of last year by taking advantage of the developer access time period. He is a fan of the new layout.

“I love that Facebook deviated from the typical layout of every social media outlet,” he said of Timeline. “They created a whole new interface while keeping everything user friendly and aesthetically appealing.”

The one aspect he especially enjoys is the integration of apps.

“My favorite is the integration with Spotify,” Parlitsis said. “It is an amazing way to share music with your friends and you can even collaborate on playlists and share them with your friends.”

According to Facebook, there are currently more than 800 million active users and more than 50 percent of users log on in any given day.

But here’s the really cool part: ShoeBox is one of the first Timeline-integrated apps that’s letting you post photos into the past. By that, I mean you can edit the date on your photo, and it will post to the correct place on your Facebook Timeline. Nifty!

I’ll admit to being a huge fan of what 1000memories is doing with its ShoeBox app, something which probably shows my age. I, like many of you (old people), didn’t “grow up” on Facebook. My childhood and young adulthood were captured by flash bulbs, printouts, and trips to the drug store to pick up prints – not smartphones and social networks. ShoeBox provides an easy way to get those old photos online so they can actually be shared and enjoyed.

In its first release back in October, the ShoeBox app allowed you to quickly snap a smartphone photo of a printed photo, crop, flatten and rotate the image, then fill in missing information, like that which might be scrawled on the back of the printout (where the photo was taken, who’s in it, what you were doing, date, etc.)

However, until today, none of that information actually appeared in the correct format to be useful on Facebook. It only worked to supplement on 1000memories’ own website, its social network of days past at 1000memories.com.

With today’s launch of the new iPhone application, things have changed. Now you can find and follow Facebook friends in the app and tag your Facebook friends by name so they’re alerted when the photos go online, a much-needed addition. You’re also now able to edit the date on the Facebook post to send it “back in time” to the date you specify.

Interestingly, this process of posting to the past could have been automated, but 1000memories says the team decided to use Facebook’s Photos API and not the OpenGraph API. Since the Photos API allows posts to appear on the Timeline in a different way – big and beautiful like Instagram now does – they decided to use it instead.

But the company is pushing Facebook to revive support for EXIF data for the ShoeBox app itself, which would allow users to automatically post pictures to the right spot while also still appearing in the attractive, larger format. EXIF (exchangeable image file format) is a standard format that contains a digital photo’s metadata information, – e.g., details about the camera’s make and model or the photo’s timestamp.

Facebook briefly supported EXIF data during Timeline’s tests, but stopped doing so because users were “freaked out” that Facebook knew when a photo was taken. Now Facebook is now more cautious about when and where it supports EXIF.

However, in a case like ShoeBox’s, using EXIF data would simplify the process of time-stamping these photos appropriately. Although the photo in question wouldn’t have been a digital photo to start, ShoeBox could still send Facebook EXIF data that relates to the scanned-in photo’s actual data of capture as indicated by a user’s caption (e.g., “Halloween 1985,” “beach trip 1997,” etc.).

The updated ShoeBox app is likely to be the first of many Timeline-integrated apps to come, now that the Facebook Timeline is mandatory. Although not everyone is thrilled about Facebook’s new look, when you can get past the knee-jerk “change is bad” mentality, there’s a pretty compelling use case here with the idea of filling out the missing Timeline dates with old photos. With Timeline, Facebook is no longer just a utility for social networking, it’s a digital representation of our lives. For it to be a truer reflection those lives, however, properly supporting the 4 trillion printed out photos in the world would be a good start.

The new version of the ShoeBox app is available here. (And yes, Android is coming)

Social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are an advertising and marketing gold mine for business owners. They provide access to current customers and offer the potential for new clientele. Despite the ease of using social media outlets for business marketing, approaching it the wrong way can be detrimental instead of beneficial. By practicing good social media etiquette, you can avoid this pitfall and turn this form of marketing into a profitable promotional tool.

1. Give Your Business a Personality

   • Although businesses use social media for the purpose of marketing products and services, social networking websites are not the same as business websites. Social media is used for social purposes. Use it to put a human face on your business. Giving your business a personality will go a long way toward gaining potential customers. Give customers a look inside the company and the people who work for it. This isn’t something you would get at a straight business website. Keeping your social media websites too company oriented can turn customers away. Send them to your main website to learn the basics about your organization.

   Avoid Hard Selling and Spam (ANNOYING)

   • Selling too hard is one of the biggest issues that can cause your social networking campaign to fail. The social network environment is more relaxed. People don’t frequent the social media scene to be hit with hard sales tactics or spam in their email. If you use a Twitter account, don’t try to make a sale with every post. The same holds true for Facebook and MySpace. It’s okay to mention products and services, but punctuate those posts with other items of interest. Let your followers know about current and future plans, and how your products or services can be beneficial. Avoid sending offers to your followers by email. This can be taken as spam, and it can become annoying and cost you customers.

   Find Followers

   • Don’t actively pursue people to follow you on Twitter or beg people to add you to their list of likes on Facebook or MySpace. Build your following legitimately. If you practice good social media skills and your products and services are of interest, you will get followers by word of mouth. Begging doesn’t look professional and it can turn off potential followers.

   Be Engaging

   • Promote your business with your social networking pages, but don’t make it a one-sided proposition. Hire someone to monitor the social websites and speak for your company. This person should monitor posts by followers and even comment on topics being discussed by some of your followers. This shows that your company is taking an active, engaging role in the social aspect of the medium and not just there for self gain. Wish your followers happy holidays. Ask for input about your company’s products and services to make your followers feel like they’re part of your business.

1. Choosing your profile picture

Thoughtful: Some people militantly believe that Facebook is all personal while LinkedIn is all professional. If this sounds like you, you might choose a Facebook pic of yourself fishing, hanging out at a party or playing a guitar.  You’re better off to err on the side of caution here, by keeping your profile picture professional, or at least neutral. Your photo doesn’t need to be in a studio with a boring canvas backdrop – it could be outside on your deck or on a mountain side, for instance – but it has to be fairly even-keeled. (This is different than LinkedIn, where photos should be strictly professional.

Thoughtless: According to Dixson, don’t post profile pictures that are “too sexy, cartoonish or that might alienate your audience.” A look through your friend list can usually reveal the ones she’s talking about. The stylized glamour shot, the quick snapshot of slicked up hair or low-cut dresses taken right before heading to a party, or worse, costume-like pics: wet suits and surfboards, bike gear, Halloween outfits -the list goes on.

2. Filling Out Your Biography

Thoughtful: The biographical section of social networks vary. On Facebook, the service provides fields for a variety of interests, both professional and personal. Don’t be afraid to post some nuggets that convey who you are, within reason. On Facebook, you can decide with great granularity what information people can view by altering your privacy settings. For instance, you can set it so every visitor to your profile sees that you enjoy golfing, reading and civil war history, but maybe only a certain group of people see your religion, political affiliations and relationships. For Facebook’s “About me” section, building on the Twitter doctrine, you need  to be short and concise. Don’t worry about being clever.

Thoughtless: While there aren’t many numbers to back this assertion (because Facebook is a private company, and data can be hard to come by), most social networking and identity experts believe a great many Facebook users never so much as glance at their privacy settings pages. The same probably holds true for other social networks. Remember that social networks plan to monetize their service by ensuring that you share as much information as possible. As such, you should believe that they’ll share as much information about you as they can, and make it available to the widest audience.

The default settings for Facebook, for example, make all your profile information available for everyone on the service to see. “Assume from the get go that anything you put in there is viewable on the public internet,” Dixson says. “Go in with that line of thinking. Then go in and say, if you don’t want to make certain information available to certain people, go turn them off with the privacy settings.”

With the information you do share, avoid being vain. Social networks do enable, if not encourage, a bit of narcissism. But don’t assume people want to read a novel about your life. Also, be protective of your family. It’s fine to list yourself as “married” in the info section, for instance, but don’t necessarily feel that you have to put down a link to your significant other. If you have young children, for their protection and privacy, Dixson recommends you don’t include their names anywhere in the bio or in pictures of them that you decide to share.

Oh, and a word about age. While you may want to include your birthday on your Facebook profile, so people can message you on the big day, you should exclude the birth year. Your friends and family know how old you are, and there’s no reason for your professional ones to know.

While creating systems and processes for listening and participating in ways that are inline with the objectives of your business are helpful, employing a social media management tool effectively is the grease that turns the wheel.

Public relations has changed dramatically in the last couple years. We are living in a world constantly bombarded by media. Not only has mass media increased in the last decade, but so have smaller media outlets and institutions that weren’t previously engaging in marketing campaigns such as colleges and universities. With the staggering rise of Internet usage and social media platforms, there is more competition. The Internet has also leveled the playing field by removing the barriers between large institutions and consumers, and many corporations find themselves now having to learn the new social media technologies.

We understand how big the social media picture is for your business. If you don’t already feel the effects of not having a blog or a Twitter account, wait another six months and you will see just how much these public relations tools can make a difference. A large online presence with followers and fans can revolutionize the way your business interacts with consumers, and ultimately draws in more of them. A public relations campaign through social media can lead to business insights, new areas of development, and increased growth. These tools and networks are available to you if you know how to use them.

Social media marketing through blogging, Twitter, Facebook and other websites means connecting to your customers, listening to them and learning about what they want from you. If done properly, you can effectively harness hundreds of thousands of interested consumers. But social media marketing takes creativity, perseverance, and skill. Gone are the days of “selling your product”. Nobody will want to buy from you on the Internet if you are engaging in traditional marketing tactics. In fact, social media is wedded to public relations by the promise of a relationship with your customers.

The new Public Relations is the great equalizer in the world of business – everyone has a chance at going “viral,” building a social media network following, creating a popular blog, or manipulating one of the many tools, available for virtually free, to reaching a core audience. It’s also a much more transparent process: poor planning, off-key messaging and lack of integration among your tactics can produce poor publicity. In short, the new PR is widely accessible, yet easily mismanaged. Do it wrong, and people will notice and shut you off. Do it right, and people will notice and respond by asking for more. Now that’s great publicity!

 We understand the nuances of social media marketing and public relations through social technology. We know the proper social media etiquette using these tools. And most importantly, we’re aware of the groundswell that your business can tap into. The opportunities are limitless with our technology. Contact us for more Information at 480-648-4251. Make Sure You Leave a message if we are helping another client