This week I’m launching a regular blog feature called “New and Improved on the Social Web.” The social media landscape continually iterates, and it’s hard to keep up with all the changes. Platforms and apps I know and love suddenly have new capabilities, add-ons, and changes. In this regular roundup, I’ll be highlighting some of the latest changes and iterations to social media platforms, apps and tools, and commenting on their implications. This week, I’m discussing changes to delicious (social bookmarking) and Facebook.

Delicious stacks

Delicious, the social bookmarking site, just rolled out a completely new web interface as well as a new product, delicious stacks. The new interface is fun and updated, and brings the brand experience in line with today’s web experience and expectations. While delicious has always enabled users to bookmark, tag, and publicly share bookmarked URLs and tags, users were not been able to compile sharable topic areas. The new feature, Stacks, is delicious’ version of publicly curated content streams. Any delicious user may create a topic (called a stack) and add links from around the web to that create a stack of the topic. Delicious users can follow stacks, share stacks with others, and save individual links within others’ stacks.

With the stacks rollout, delicious is clearly trying to be a player in the content curation trend. If this succeeds, stacks could easily compete with other curation tools such as Google Reader, scoop.it and Pearltrees.

Changes to Facebook Pages

Facebook announced a lot of upcoming changes to Facebook at their F8 developer conference in September. Some of those changes are rolling out now, with implications for your page.

Open commenting allowed on page walls and posts

One of the more significant changes to your page is that any Facebook user can Like or comment on your page’s posts and post to its wall, without Liking the your page first. Just as you had previously managed your settings to allow fans to write or post content to your Facebook wall, the new permission allows “users” to do so. One note: this is an automatic “opt-out” change – if you allowed fans to post, the new settings automatically allow any Facebook user to post.

Potentially more people will post to your page and Like its content because they can interact with it more easily. Ideally, more Facebook users will see your content because the increased commenting will appear in users’ newsfeeds (now called “tickers.”) A user still has to Like a page for that specific page’s updates to show up in his/her ticker. On the other hand, there is less incentive to Like a page if a user just wants to post or comment. The largest implication I see is that page admins now have an even better incentive to create engaging and sharable content.

“People are Talking About”(PATA) metric and new Insights

The new metric appears below your page’s Likes, on the left-hand side of the wall. It is Facebook’s attempt to benchmark and reveal how engaging your page’s content is. The PATA metric includes people who “have created a story about your post,” and creating a “story” includes people who:

- like, share, or comment on a post either on the wall
- answer a Question on your page
- mention your page or tag it or a photo of yours
- like or share a check-in deal, or check-in in at your Facebook Place

The new Facebook Insights offers a more subtle breakdown of engagement by individual post than the old Insights. The previous individual Post Impressions metric has been replaced with multiple engagement metrics: Reach, Engaged Users, Talking About This, and Virality.

According to Search Engine Land’s comprehensive summary of the new Insights:

“The goal of Pages insights for Page admins is to understand what drives that number and how they can best engage their advocates, so that they can get a sense of how to optimize their Page content to increase the people they’re reaching with their messages.  Which means that no matter the size of your Page’s audience, you can really get a good sense for which posts spread and get shared with others.”

I believe the new Insights will offer admins a more accurate sense of how engaging their pages’ content is with fans. If nonprofits are using social media to move online fans to take action, and to help the organization further its mission of changing the world, then creating more online engagement is a critical step in that path.

Recommended reading list for information about Facebook’s recent changes

Demystifying Facebook’s “People Are Talking About This” Metric from Search Engine Land

Is The New Facebook “People Are Talking About” Metric Useless? from Beth Kanter

Notes from Mari Smith’s Facebook Changes Webinar from Mari Smith via Beth Kanter

Five Recent Upgrades to Facebook Pages Your Nonprofit May Not Know About from Nonprofitorgs

Seven Ways Facebook’s Subscribe Button Could Be A Game Changer from John Haydon

image courtesy of j_a_n

How can organizations best utilize the social bookmarking site Delicious? Though not the largest of the social bookmarking sites (it is 7th of the top 20), it is one of the easiest sites to mine for information. It is deliciously simple (pun intended!) to use, and there are over 180 tools, add-ons, and related resources to help you to take advantage of this platform. I can think of three broad ways organizations can use Delicious: for public/private information-gathering, intra company collaboration, and sharing news with stakeholders. I’m sure there are more! How do you use Delicious?

Information Gathering (public or private)

Use Delicious to gather relevant information: stay on top of the latest industry developments, competitor news, research new possibilities, and monitor tags of your own organization’s name. Use Delicious to search for these items or articles of interest to your organization. Remember, you can determine whether or not each bookmark will be seen publicly, and you decide if you want others to know what you are researching!

1. Follow Users:

Find and follow fellow industry professionals that upload bookmarks.  Select the “add a user to network” option in order to collect all of your favorite users’ bookmarks in one place.  Here is a screen shot of how to add a user to your network:

2. Follow Tags:

You can  “subscribe” to specific tags of interest in Delicious. This action sends all your subscriptions directly to your Delicious home page. Alternatively, you can also create an RSS (really simple syndication) feed to automatically update whenever new articles with the subscribed tag are bookmarked. You can also create an RSS feed of any user’s bookmarks.

As an example, I searched Delicious for all tagged information about the electric car, and subscribe to the RSS feed for all future articles tagged “electric car.”

Intra company Collaboration

Why not use Delicious for sharing information within the company? Create a custom organizational intranet for sharing bookmarks! No copying and sending the URLs by email, no re-posting to your company’s intranet. When everyone in the company is encouraged to share articles, the volume of intra company news sharing increases.

Two options for intra company news sharing:

1. Encourage employees to bookmark and share tags using one company password and user ID, but mark each bookmark as the “do not share!” All employees can log in to see the newest bookmarks, or subscribe to the company’s bookmarks.  Here is a sample screen shot:

2. Create individual employee accounts, and employees tag bookmarks with a set of agreed-upon tag names. To share the information, employees in the company subscribe to each other’s networks, bookmarks, and specifically-named identifying tags (e.g. conversationprogram221).

Sharing News with Stakeholders

Create a news feed on the website of bookmarked news about your organization. This displays a vibrant, crowdsourced “News” section of the website, or a scrolling news widget out of your Delicious bookmarks.  Here are two variations on this idea:

1. Whenever your organization is mentioned in the news, bookmark it to Delicious and tag it with your company’s name. Create an RSS feed for all Delicious tags with your company’s name. Place the RSS feed on the front page of the website or the sidebar of your blog. You could put the RSS feed in the “News” section of your website, but that’s not as fun!

2. Create a public RSS feed to your website of all tags relevant to stakeholders. For example, if your organization’s mission is advocacy for the electric car,  create RSS feeds for the tags “electric car,” “alternative energy automobile,” “automobile efficiency,” and other related tags.

Of course, don’t forget that bookmarks are public by default. This means that you are already sharing information with your stakeholders. Ask them to subscribe to your bookmarks! Tell them that this is the way your organization offers news to other Delicious users. And…don’t forget to mention your Delicious account on the website!

How does your organization use Delicious? Please share your stories with us in the comments section below!