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How to Optimize Your Facebook Ads for Event Conversions on Eventbrite

Posted on September 25, 2013 by jessestay

In preparation for my upcoming webinar on Facebook ads, I felt I would be a hypocrite if I did not use some of the strategies I’m teaching in the webinar on my own event for the webinar. In searching Google, I couldn’t find any good solution listed, but I did figure out a way to optimize your Facebook ad campaigns for when people buy, or sign up for your events on Eventbrite. That means Facebook will do its best to only charge you for your Facebook ads when people purchase your event!

The secret is simple. At the end of the Eventbrite event registration process, there is a confirmation page each attendee is taken to. You can actually edit this page, and it takes HTML. So all you need to do is get your Facebook conversion pixel in there and you’re good to go. Here are the steps:

First, get your Facebook conversion pixel

To start off, go to your Facebook Ads Manager. I’m not going to go into fine detail on how to do that – you can go buy my book, I’m on Facebook–Now What??? (the 2nd Edition) to learn how to set up a Facebook ad. Or register for my webinar that takes place in 3 weeks and I’ll even show you some really valuable techniques, just like this one, that will take your ads to the next level! (if you’re reading this after the webinar, you can also purchase downloads at that link)

In Facebook Ads Manager, on the left side column, there is a link that says “Conversion Tracking”. Click on that.

This is the page where you set up your conversion pixel. In the upper-right, you’ll see a big green button that says “Create Conversion Pixel”. Click on that.

A popover will appear, asking you to name your conversion pixel, and select a type. I called my “Eventbrite Ticket Sales”. You can name this whatever you want though. I also choose the “Checkouts” option, since I’m tracking sales. This is just to allow you to categorize different types of conversion pixels you might use. Here’s what mine looks like:

On the following screen/popover you’ll now be given code you can copy and paste into your Eventbrite page. This is what mine looks like:

Do NOT follow the instructions on this page. Instead, all you want for Eventbrite is the piece between the and the tag. In the above example, I would just copy the text, (the image tag) and nothing else. The reason for this is Eventbrite strips out all JavaScript from the code you put on their page, but they do support image tags! The image tag will be all you need. Click “Close”, and your conversion pixel will be set up. You’ll note that right now it says “Unverified” – this means no one has hit a page with your conversion pixel on it. That’s okay. Now we need to add this code to Eventbrite.

Add your conversion pixel code to your Eventbrite Event

To add the code you just created (again, just the image tag!), go to the “Manage” section of your event. This will take you to the Event Dashboard. On the left side of the Event Dashboard, you’re going to want to click the “Order Confirmation” link. You’ll be taken to a page that looks like this:

13a38-eventbriteorderconfirmation-9026507

On this page, scroll down to the text area at the bottom that says “Message to be displayed on confirmation webpage:” (below “Customize order confirmation webpage”). This is the area you want to add your code. Below any confirmation message you add, copy, and paste the conversion pixel image tag you copied above. It will look like this when you’re done:

44a9a-eventbriteorderconfirmationcode-3038552

Now, click “Save”, but there’s one more thing you need to do. You want your conversion pixel to be verified. Once saved, click on the link, “View your current order confirmation page” below the final text area where you entered your conversion pixel code. This will take you to what looks like the order confirmation page. Don’t worry – your conversion pixel is invisible, so you won’t actually see it on this page, but you did want this page to load at least once!

Now that you’ve loaded your page, go back to your Facebook Ads Manager, look at the “Conversion Tracking” page again, and next to your conversion tracking link you just set up, it will now have a big, green “active” next to it if all worked well! This means your conversion pixel now works, and will load every time someone buys one of your event options!

So now you just need to add the conversion pixel to your Facebook ad.

Set up your Facebook Ad with your conversion pixel

In the Facebook Ad you created, at the bottom, you can set optimization options. You should have the option to “optimize for conversion”. Select this, and a drop-down will appear with your new conversion pixel listed in it. Select that conversion pixel. Now, Facebook will do its best to make what you pay only occur when an actual conversion occurs! This means real sales, for a fraction of what you’re paying in Facebook ads. That should be how every one of your Facebook ad campaigns runs.

Want to focus more of your ad campaigns on conversions? I’ve got a webinar coming up where I’ll share how to build audiences on your Facebook Pages that you can optimize for conversions. My techniques aren’t well known in the industry, so you’ll be learning very unique strategies, just like this one, that can help take your Facebook ad campaigns to the next level! You don’t want to miss this – go sign up here!

Wanna Learn Facebook Development? Check Out My New Video Series

Posted on March 19, 2012 by jessestay

Facebook application development isn’t just a skill, and it’s not just for developers either – it’s a mindset and a culture that you have to understand to truly understand and implement its value. It’s something both marketers, business owners, as well as developers should understand to fully have a grasp against the competition in this increasingly social world. That’s why I jumped at the chance to work with the popular online learning site, Pluralsight, to do a new series on Facebook application development. My first video went live yesterday, and I hope will be the first in a line of videos you can use to hone your skills both as a marketer and developer to take advantage of the most of Facebook Platform.

In my first course, you’ll learn why Facebook is such a valuable tool to integrate with your business or marketing strategy. I’ll show you example apps that have seen success on the Platform, and then take you through, step-by-step, on how you can set up a custom Facebook Page tab on Facebook without any HTML knowledge necessary to get started. You’ll end understanding the different integration points you can use to build an app, or just integrate Facebook into your existing website or app design. I teach you social design philosophy and the different touch points you should understand no matter what your skill set.

Whether you’re a marketer, a developer, or business owner I think you’ll enjoy this course. I think you’ll be surprised with what you’re able to accomplish by the end, and what your understanding will become when you’re finished. If you’ve ever wanted to get your hands dirty with what you can fully do on Facebook, this is a course you can’t neglect, regardless of your skill set.

The course is part of Pluralsight’s learning platform, and I hope will be one of many future courses you can learn from on these topics. It also joins Facebook’s own Yasser Shohoud’s Facebook Platform Overview that serves as a great primer for where my course will take you.

When I considered this I thought about just doing my own video series and charging monthly for access to those. I would have likely charged around $100-200 for access to that for it to be worth it to me. I realized though, that by partnering with Pluralsight, you could get my content, as well as hundreds of other courses from other experts that are top at their game. Instead of $200 for one-time access to my videos, you can pay as little as $29 per month (you cancel whenever you like) or $299 per year and get unlimited access to mine and anyone else’s courses on their platform. To me I think it’s a great deal.

With this course you’ll get:

Material for all types to understand – marketers, business owners, and developers
Step-by-step videos taking you through the entire process, which you can step away from at any time.
Assessment to test your knowledge at the end of the course and grade you on your understanding of the topics covered
Knowledge of why you should understand Facebook Platform
Step-by-step tutorials on how to build custom Facebook tabs
Hands-on videos giving you the basics of Facebook’s developer platform, allowing all to understand all they need to get started
Access to all future courses on Facebook by me and others.

If you want to understand Facebook in a way your competitors don’t, go register for my Facebook development course today! The tips I cover are things not many in the industry know, and you’ll have the upper-hand in your industry.

To register, just click here and follow the instructions. Then go over here to my course’s Facebook Application Development page to get started in knowing what your competitors don’t!

For the first 20 commenters that ask below I’ll give a code for a free unlimited 7 day trial to try the service and take my course.

How to Replace Twitter With Facebook

Posted on February 12, 2011 by jessestay

I just wrote about how Twitter is becoming much less necessary for me. In this post, I’d like to show you how, with just a few steps, you can get exactly what you’re getting on Twitter and more with just a Facebook account and a Page you administer. It’s actually really simple now. Here are the steps:

Set up your Facebook Account. You’ve probably already done this, but if not, just go to Facebook.com, enter your details, and click “Register”. Log in, and you’re set!

Create your Facebook Page. You can do this at Facebook.com/pages. I also cover this in detail in Facebook Application Development for Dummies soon to be released. Create one that mimics your Twitter Profile.

Go to your Facebook Page, and click “Use Facebook as (your Page name)”. You’ll see the options on the right change to “Use Facebook as (your Profile name)” when this has worked. Also, note that if you already have a Facebook Page, just go to the new Page, upgrade it to the new profile, and you should also have these options.

Click the big “Facebook” logo in the upper-left. You’ll now be presented with a news feed, just like the one you would normally see on your profile. Looks familiar, doesn’t it? It probably doesn’t have much information in it right now though. Now you need to make that News Feed valuable. You’ll do that with step 5.

Find interesting Facebook Pages, and click “like”! On the right you should already be presented with some suggestions for Facebook Pages. Click “like” on those if you like them. Or, find friends and brands that you like via the search box and click “like” on those as well. The more you click “like” on, the more you’ll have appear in your feed. Looks a lot like Twitter, huh? In fact, you could create multiple Pages, and use those as “lists”, each one following accounts that are relevant to just that Page. Click “use Facebook as (Page Name)” for each Page, and you’ll get a new view of different types of users to follow on each. Scoble ought to like this one 😉

Replacing Twitter Search

At the moment I’ll admit, Facebook Search isn’t quite as granular as Twitter search. However, you can get search results from status updates, as your personal account, or as your Page. Just type in “facebook” into the Facebook search box as an example and click on “See more results for Facebook” in the drop down. Then, click on “Posts by everyone”. You’ll immediately see a real-time stream of updates from people, that updates in real-time, of people and Pages posting in public about “facebook”. Try it with other terms, like “Scoble”, for instance.

There’s also another, more advanced, way you can search. It’s sort of a hack, but definitely possible, and something I also show you in Facebook Application Development for Dummies. By calling https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=scoble&type=post in your browser you should get a parseable result set back from Facebook with all public Profile and Page results mentioning “scoble”. You could technically call https://graph.facebook.com/(id) (replacing id with the id of the user or Page) on each post and look to see if the object type is a user or a Page. Or maybe it doesn’t matter. I imagine Facebook will get more granular with these results in the future though. You can also, with some advanced magic, get back all the posts from Pages your Page subscribes to that match “facebook” or “scoble”.

What’s Missing Still

Search. Of course, Facebook still needs more search options compared to Twitter for them to be an exact parallel. Twitter’s search was built to index and retrieve granular data at the user level, and you can subscribe to each resultset as simple RSS. Facebook just doesn’t have this yet, although I wouldn’t doubt they see the power in this. After all, Facebook’s CTO, Bret Taylor, founded FriendFeed, and they have perhaps an even more granular (when it’s working) search than Twitter has. I have no doubt Facebook recognizes the value in this.

Lists. With Facebook, even before Twitter, you could organize your friends into lists of users you can follow and organize by list. This is yet to be released for Pages. While, as a user, you can organize a list of Pages, a Page cannot yet create its own lists. Where a Page is more comparable to a Twitter account, adding list support, and public list support (which others can subscribe to) would significantly increase the value Facebook has compared to Twitter. Public lists are one of Twitter’s crown jewels right now.

Firehose. Twitter charges for this as a whole and actually makes it very accessible compared to Facebook. Right now I’m pretty sure you can get access to Facebook’s firehose if you have money and the right contacts and reasons to do it. However, Facebook doesn’t make this very easy. Maybe it’s rightfully so in that only a few developers and companies can be capable of even handling such data, but Twitter does make this pretty easy to access via services such as Gnip. I argue this is an advantage Twitter has over Facebook right now.

What else am I missing?

Some Things Facebook Has That Twitter Doesn’t

While Facebook still misses some elements that Twitter provides, there are still features Facebook has, that, IMO, make it an even more valuable solution than Twitter, namelyI:

Insights. Facebook provides very granular data on how well each post is doing, demographics that are visiting the Page, growth of the Page over time, and much, much more. Twitter has been rumored to be making a similar analytics suite, but has yet to release anything comparable to what Facebook provides. (I wouldn’t count Twitter out of providing one in the future, though)

Richer, inline content. Facebook shows photos, videos, links, and more that a Page has posted. You can also view the same, all inline, with the News Feed view of those accounts you’ve liked. With Twitter, you have to click on each post, and only occasionally that content appears on the right column of Twitter.com.

Viewing Wall Posts of Other Users. On Facebook, as a Page admin, I can enable the default view of my Page’s Wall to be posts to the Wall by other people that have “liked” the Page. This is an interesting strategy if your brand has a devoted audience, as it’s a great way to show people that are interested in your brand and show that you have a loyal following. It’s also a great way to maintain a positive perception of your brand. With Twitter there is nothing even close to this.

Events. Each Page can create its own events, that other users on Facebook can RSVP and have their friends see they RSVP’d. This is built into Facebook, making it an integrated part of the experience, and a very viral tool for getting information out about a particular event occurring surrounding yourself or your brand.

Customization and Branding. With Twitter I get a background and a profile picture. While Facebook doesn’t allow background images, it does allow a default, full HTML view, for every Facebook Page that chooses to do so. Therefore, I can set it so the first time you visit my Facebook Page you are presented immediately with a welcome message from me and any other relevant information. This is very powerful! (I show you how to do this in Facebook Application Development for Dummies) You can’t do this with Twitter.

Advertising. As I mentioned earlier, frequent requests to promotedtweets@twitter.com return no response (others are tweeting me saying they’ve seen the same, despite spending millions on Facebook). There is no interface to create ads for the common user. It’s almost impossible to advertise on Twitter. On Facebook, it’s as simple as visiting http://facebook.com/ads and following the instructions. In fact, I can see close to exactly how many impressions I’m going to get through my ad on Facebook. Facebook has been pretty transparent in this.

What else am I missing?

There’s no doubt Facebook is making it harder and harder to justify Twitter any more. For many, this article may actually convince you. My hope is that a) Twitter realizes this and adapts to compete, or b) Facebook realizes this and closes the final missing pieces to remove all needed functionality that a Twitter account can provide. There are actually very few of those missing pieces any more!

If you haven’t yet considered a Facebook Page or the possibilities it can provide, now may be the time to start considering if you’re on Twitter. Assuming Twitter does get acquired, or Facebook does continue competing the way it has, you’re going to want an audience on Facebook just the same as you have on Twitter. More importantly, build your own presence and blog so it doesn’t matter any which way what network you’re on! 2011 will be an interesting year, that’s for sure.

Howto: Getting the Logitech Revue (Google TV) to Work With Comcast Cable Boxes

Posted on December 28, 2010 by jessestay

As I’ve Tweeted, Facebooked, and Buzzed about recently, Google sent me a Logitech Revue Google TV unit shortly before Christmas which I will probably be using to write apps for. There are many things I like about it, many I don’t, but I’ll save that review (no pun intended) for another date. I did want to post briefly on an issue I came across that had me really frustrated, as there were no answers on the web.

The issue stems with Comcast Cable Boxes (mine was the HD PVR unit with HDMI out) not working well in receivers that have more than one HDMI cable input connected at a time. I have the Harman Kardon AVR-247 and when I would connect the Comcast Cable box to my Logitech Revue unit, I would get Content Protection errors each time (HDCP – Google it, with “Logitech Revue”). I tried every means of connecting, and no matter what I tried I couldn’t get it to display TV without the HDCP error, a big green message on top of the screen from the Comcast digital cable box.

I Googled it, and came across issue after issue of Comcast customers having similar problems with the Comcast Cable boxes, with no answers, and no response from Comcast (Many were complaining that Comcast was sending them back to Motorola, some saying Comcast was blaming Google, etc.). The only answer I came up with was that the AVR (your receiver) did not work well when it had more than one input in the box, something that was necessary in my situation because I also have an Xbox, an Apple TV, along with a Blu Ray DVD player. The Apple TV and Logitech Revue only have HDMI ports, while the others I prefer to connect via HDMI where possible. The only solution I found was to connect the output of the Logitech Revue unit out to the TV’s HDMI input port, and the Comcast Box into the Logitech Revue, then using the Optical out port of the Revue to connect to the Optical input of the receiver, giving me the sound I need (you may have to read that a few times to get it). My problem was that my TV is still pretty old (but can you argue with 65 inches???), and only has one input HDMI port, which is already being used by the receiver.

So I thought about it, and realized the problem was because I had 2 HDMI cables connected to the receiver. I also happened to have an HDMI hub, which I purchased from Best Buy for about $100, but is also available in various forms starting at around $30 or so on Amazon and elsewhere. I was using this already to power some of the other HDMI devices I was using. So I disconnected the second port completely, and put everything into the HDMI hub. Voila! It worked! No more content protection errors!

So if you’re seeing the HDCP Content Protection errors with your Cable box on the Logitech Revue, you may want to consider going out and purchasing an HDMI hub, get rid of all but one HDMI input into your receiver, and connect everything to your hub. I’m pretty sure this method will work for almost everyone. In the meantime, Comcast told me on Twitter that they are aware of the issue, and they’re working on a firmware fix to hopefully fix the issue on their Cable boxes. It’s good to know they are now recognizing the problem, although they can’t give any ETA on a fix.

It was actually this problem that convinced me to just go get rabbit ears – with a Google TV, an Xbox and Windows Media Center, and an Apple TV, do I really need cable TV any more? Assuming you do, well, here’s the answer.

With the New Design, Twitter Kills RSS, Literally

Posted on September 20, 2010 by jessestay

The blogosphere is abuzz lately about the latest trend: “RSS is Dead,” everyone says. Other blogs say “RSS isn’t dead.” (of which side I tend to agree with). The debate lies with the fact that more and more people are starting to use Twitter, Twitter lists, Facebook, and other social means to just get the news from the streams they follow on these sites rather than typical RSS Readers like Google Reader. For instance, even on my own Google Reader shares, you can get them right on my @jesseslinks Twitter stream if you don’t ever want to touch Google Reader (yet I’m still using Google Reader to provide those to you). Whatever side you agree with, I just discovered one thing we’ll all be able to agree with: at least on its own site in the new design, Twitter has quite literally killed RSS. Into thin air it’s gone in the new UI.

I talked previously about Twitter increasingly becoming less and less open and more and more a walled garden. Facebook itself just added RSS to its feeds for Facebook Pages and opened its database so you can reformat their content, so long as users approve, in any way you like. It appears, as no surprise, Twitter is moving in the opposite direction. In the new design I can’t find an RSS feed anywhere. Previously there was a link to the lower-right allowing you to add an RSS feed. They also had a link to the RSS in the source of the HTML so your browser would automatically recognize the feed, and just entering the URL for the user profile into Google Reader, they could automatically detect the feed for you.

Currently the only way to find an RSS feed is to log out and visit the profile of the user when you’re not logged into Twitter. This might also be why Google Reader still recognizes feeds when you enter user profile URLs in the “Add Subscription” box. Firefox doesn’t recognize the feed when I’m logged in – it does when I’m not. It does make you wonder how long the RSS feed will be in the unauthenticated version.

It’s hard to tell if this is intentional or not, but we do know Twitter wants to be a source for news. Perhaps they think this is in their best interest – the harder they make it for you to read your news elsewhere, the more likely you are to come to Twitter.com to read your news from your friends. One thing is for sure however – the new Twitter design is certainly less open than it was before. Twitter, especially with the new design, is now a walled garden.

I’ve contacted Twitter about this and will update here with any response.

UPDATE: For some reason Twitter’s PR never responded. However, even better, Isaac Hepworth, a developer from Twitter, responded on Buzz, inferring some of it was a mistake, while some of it was intentional to make things simpler:

“Hey Ade, thanks for the cc and sorry for the delay jumping in. I’ve been talking to people internally to work out what happened here so that I could untangle it properly.

Here’s the scoop: the RSS itself is still there (as Jesse’s roundabout method for finding it shows). Two things were removed in #NewTwitter:
1. The hyperlink to the RSS on the profile page; and
2. The link to the RSS in the profile page metadata (ie. the element in the ).

(2) was wholly accidental, and we’ll fix that. In the meantime, Jesse’s way of finding the RSS is as good as any, and you can still subscribe to user timelines in products like Google Reader by just adding a subscription to the profile URL, eg. http://twitter.com/isaach.

(1) on the other hand was deliberate, in line with the “keep Twitter simple” principle which we used to approach the product as a whole. Identifying RSS for a page and exposing it to users per their preferences is a job which most browsers now do well on their own based on s.

Hope that helps!”

Facebook-hosted "Pages" are No Longer Necessary – Here’s Why

Posted on August 5, 2010 by jessestay

Social Media Examiner shared some advice I gave on their Facebook Page recently regarding the warning about Facebook “boxes” being removed from Facebook Pages in the next week. The reminder was met with a lot of concern from subscribers, who had grown attached to the ability to customize the look and feel of their Facebook Pages through the Static FBML app on Facebook and the ability to add custom “boxes” to the Wall of their Page. The other concern is that Facebook will also be switching to the smaller, 520px Tab format, reducing the amount of surface area for a custom tab to add personalization to a Facebook Page. I argue all this concern is moot however – there is something better Page owners can be doing that they aren’t, and that is moving their Pages over to their own websites and managing the interface there instead of on Facebook.com, and I think that’s the direction Facebook wants Page owners to go.

At Facebook’s sold out F8 developer conference this year this focus seemed evident. Facebook launched a series of new “Social Plugins”, and a protocol (called Open Graph Protocol) enabling any website to essentially become a “Facebook Page”. Right off, website owners could simply put a “like button” Social Plugin on their website by copying and pasting an iframe tag from Facebook’s developer site, and immediately, with some added meta tags added to the section of their HTML, they could have all the functionality of a Facebook Page right on their own website.

Facebook had a great demo at the conference, which Jolie O’Dell (from Mashable) pointed me to (see her article about it here), where they basically took all the content from Lady Gaga’s Page and converted it to its own, customized website with its own look and feel that you could easily change themes. Facebook-me.com, which appears to still be there, enabled customized themes to be applied to profiles, perhaps similar to MySpace in a way, but in a way that website owners themselves could host those themes on their own servers. All this could be done through simple Graph API calls and some customization on your own server. See their demo they gave me here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix0OY6_6y_8

For instance, if you query http://graph.facebook.com/stay/feed in your browser, immediately you’ll be presented with a parseable feed taken straight from my Facebook Page of all the posts put there. Re-format that in any way you like and you have your own customized Facebook Page. No login necessary.

It can be even better though. Rather than letting Facebook host the data, you can handle most of it on your own through Social Plugins. For instance, let’s look at what happens if I want to make StayNAlive.com its own Facebook Page (in fact I’ll do it right here so you can try it out when I’m finished). I simply go to http://developers.facebook.com and click on the big green “Add Facebook to my Site” button, then click on the Social Plugins link. Select the “Like Button” social plugin, and enter http://staynalive.com in the URL box. Click the “Get Code” button, and you’ll be given code that looks like this:

http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fstaynalive.com&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=80

Now, if I put that at the top of the website, a like button appears, and my website is now a Facebook Page. Go ahead and click “like” and you’ll see what I mean. Now you’re subscribed to my “Page”, you’ll get all the posts I send to your news feed, and best of all, any links to the “Page” go back to my actual website, and not Facebook.com.

Becoming an Admin

To get all the benefits of turning your website into a Page and having the full flexibility of customization, you’ll need to make a couple updates to the section of your site’s HTML. These meta tags follow a standard called “Open Graph Protocol”, and by following it, Facebook will know how to represent your site inside Facebook. There are different tags that can specify the title of your site, a main image for your site, and more, but the most important tag you need to add to your site’s section is a meta tag that looks like this:

This specific meta tag identifies the user, 683545112 (which happens to be my Facebook ID), as the admin for your website on Facebook. To get your Facebook ID, the best way I use is to go to your profile, click on your profile image, and look at the number after “id=” in the URL. That’s your Facebook ID. You can also specify multiple Facebook IDs in the content attribute of the meta tag by separating them by commas.

Once you specify this, next to your like button that you just installed you’ll see a “Admin Page” link next to the like button that, by clicking on the link, will take you to what looks like a regular Facebook Page on Facebook. It’s from there you can post updates to your fans and have them see it in their news feed. Also, once you’re identified as an admin, any link to the Facebook Page in your own Feed will link back to that admin interface on Facebook.com. (not to the website itself, which is what all other users will see)

For other meta tag identifiers you can use, view the source of this website and look in the section – look for the “og:” meta tags. You can also read more about it in the developer documentation here.

The Feed

By using this method, you get all the benefits of any normal Facebook Page on Facebook.com. You just have to install the proper Facebook Social Plugins to get what you want. For instance, if you want your visitors to see a feed of all items you’ve posted to the feed, install the “Like Box” social plugin, and enter the ID of the Facebook Page you just set up. (to get the ID, go to the “Admin Page” link next to your like button, and it’s the long number in the URL) Look over on the right of this website to see an example of the Like Box feed.

As mentioned above, you can also post items to your feed. Click “Edit Page” on your admin Page, and you can set up an RSS feed to import notes into your feed. I can also post videos, pictures, or anything else, just as I would a normal Facebook Page hosted on Facebook.com.

Importing Your Blog Posts

You’ll notice the “Like Box” on the right that has all the posts from this blog on it. That’s because I’m importing the RSS for this blog and now ever time a new post goes out all the people that have “Liked” StayNAlive.com via the link above will get all the posts I submit via this blog. This can be a great alternative to allowing users to subscribe via RSS.

So there you have it – any need to customize a Facebook.com-hosted Page is now moot. We don’t need them any more. I see no reason for hosting on Facebook itself if you need full customization. In fact, all links your visitors see in Facebook will now point back to your own website and not Facebook.com. When the user likes your website it will now appear in their interests and link back to your website. That can be good for SEO. Search results will link back to your website, and hints will show up for all your visitors’ friends, pointing them back to your website.

This, IMO is the ideal way to set up a Facebook Page now. The Facebook Page hosted on Facebook.com is not the future. Your website is the future, and Facebook has made it completely possible for you to own this experience.

Are there any reasons you can think of not to use this method? What other tips do you have? I’d like to hear them in the comments and I’ll update this post as it makes sense.

How to Downgrade From iOS 4.0 to iOS 3.1.3 Firmware on the iPhone

Posted on June 23, 2010 by jessestay

Recently, after the excitement of upgrading to iOS 4.0 this last week, I had need to downgrade again so I could sell it in preparation for my new iPhone 4. There are many others who say iOS 4 is slow on their iPhones and also want a way to downgrade. Previously, there were ways to downgrade if you had the iOS 4.0 beta installed, but since the final release, Apple seems to be verifying new restores, and doesn’t seem to want people to downgrade to the 3.1.3 firmware. You can tell from the long list of support requests in the Apple Support Forums.

I finally found a way to make this work, thanks to combined help from GadgetsDNA and MacLife. It seems that Apple is checking a server at gs.apple.com, and if you previously saved your ECID SHSH certificate to Saurik’s authentication server you can trick iTunes into thinking his server is their own and go through with the install. If you haven’t saved your certificate (you may have done this if you jailbroke your iPhone before), feel free to try this and let me know if it works, but I hear unfortunately there isn’t yet a way to make it work. I hope to be proven wrong.

So here’s what you need to do:

First, you need to trick iTunes into thinking Saurik’s server is Apple’s. To do so, you need to find your hosts file (On a Mac, this is on /etc/hosts. On a PC, this is in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\). Once you’ve found it, edit it, and add the line, “74.208.10.249 gs.apple.com” to the end. This points gs.apple.com to 74.208.10.249.

Next, you need to put your phone in restore mode in preparation for the restore. To do this, just disconnect your iPhone and turn it off (do this by holding down the power button until you see the “power off” slider). Then hold your home button while you reconnect the phone to your computer. Keep the home button pressed until iTunes opens and gives you a message saying you need to restore.

Now, you’re going to need a 3.1.3 firmware file. Here is one for the 3GS. Here is one for the 3G. To load the file, hold down the alt button on a PC, or on a Mac, hold down the alt/option key and click “Restore” in iTunes.

Wait for the restore, and if it works when you’re done, it should reboot into 3.1.3 and you’re done!

For me, I got a 1015 error, so I then went and followed the instructions MacLife to complete the restore process. To start, you need to download iRecovery (I only have the Mac version) and libusb.

With iRecovery downloaded, go to the directory you downloaded it to and type:

./iRecovery -s

setenv auto-boot true

saveenv

fsboot

exit

Now, you just need to reboot the phone and you’ll be back to iOS 3.1.3! To reboot the phone, just hold down the power and home buttons until you see the Apple logo.

Let me know how this works for you. Oh, and do so at your own risk! While I don’t anticipate these steps hurting your phone, I offer no guarantee and there is always a chance doing steps Apple didn’t intend will break your phone.

Make Your Facebook Page Fly With the FBFoundations Facebook Chicklet

Posted on December 22, 2009 by jessestay

Most guys (and girls) who love Facebook like I do probably have a Facebook Page where those wanting to get a scoop of the latest in our professional lives can come learn, chat, and converse with each other. I consider a Facebook Page (some call them “Fan Pages”) the equivalent on Facebook to a Twitter Profile, as it enables a public, anonymous way to express yourself without limit to the number of people that “follow” you. Pages are powerful, and can build strong engagement for you and your brand in ways Twitter or even a regular Facebook Profile can’t. I was surprised that with all the little “chicklets” out there displaying anywhere from the number of readers on your blog to the number of followers you have on Twitter that there wasn’t anything for blog owners to display the number of Fans they have on Facebook. That’s why I created the FBFoundations Facebook Chicklet for WordPress blogs.

The premise of the chicklet is simple. It uses Facebook Connect (something I argue is even more powerful than a Facebook Page, but requires someone with at least HTML and Javascript knowledge to implement) to go out and get the number of fans for a Facebook Page you specify, and share the number of those fans right on your blog. In addition, it hyperlinks the chicklet back to your Facebook Page. Displaying this chicklet on your blog can be a great way to encourage readers to click through and become fans on Facebook as well, where more conversations can take place and your blog can spread even further. You can see the Facebook Chicklet for this blog up above this article next to the subscribers and twitter followers chicklets. Go ahead and click on it and become a fan and I’ll send you more updates!

Implementation

To implement the chicklet, you’ll first need to download the FBFoundations plugin (download here) that I wrote and can be downloaded here. This just makes it so that it can access Facebook to get the number of Fans for your Page. It will also add an additional meta tag or two to make sharing your blog a little prettier when it’s shared on Facebook.

Once you’ve downloaded and activated FBFoundations on your blog, just download the FBFoundations Facebook Chicklet plugin, extract it into your WordPress plugins directory, and activate it. You’ll then want to configure it to point to your Facebook Page in your blog’s admin (if not, it will point to mine!). Now, go to either the sidebar widgets section in your administration if your blog is widgets-enabled, or go into your Blog’s theme files, and place the following code anywhere you want the chicklet to show up:

Once that’s in and the plugin is activated, the chicklet should start showing with the number of Fans on your Facebook Page. It’s that simple.

Again, be sure to enable the FBFoundations plugin on your blog for this to work. Also, if you want to also enable sharing for each blog post on your blog to Facebook, along with the number of people that have shared the post, be sure to also check out my FBShare plugin for WordPress!

I guess this is kind of my Christmas present to you all. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy Chanukah this season!

You can download the plugin straight from WordPress right here. Here is the WordPress plugin page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/fbfoundations-facebook-chicklet/

Image Courtesy Robb Sutton from http://robbsutton.com/micro-blogging-are-facebook-and-twitter-replacing-personal-blogs/

Netflix’ Little Known Information for Parents Feature

Posted on December 14, 2009 by jessestay

This post is guest-authored by Luke Stay – you can find him on his blog, AfroWhitey.com, on Twitter, or on his Facebook Page. Luke is Jesse’s younger brother.

I was doing a little exploring on Netflix a while ago when I came across a feature that I had never seen before. It’s called “Information for Parents,” and I don’t know why Netflix doesn’t promote it more. It takes a little digging (as far as I can tell) to even get to it, but it should be one of the most-used features on the site.

To get to the feature, you must first click on the link for a movie (not all movies have the feature, so stick with popular releases). For this post, I will use the new Star Trek. Under the “Details” section, you’ll see the rating of the movie with the MPAA reasons for the rating, and below that you’ll see Netflix’ rating, along with a link for more. Click on that link and you’ll be taken to the Parental Information feature.

The section that comes up is full of valuable information. I am a firm believer in active viewership, meaning that when watching a movie, especially with children, attention should be paid to the messages and themes underlying the plot and all the spectacle. In this feature, Netflix provides sample discussion points for parents to address with children after viewing, thus promoting the active viewership so often missing in many households. It also brings up some possible underlying messages you may have missed.

Next, the feature spells out specifically what elements gave the movie the rating Netflix awarded and why it is or is not appropriate for a certain age group. The categories covered are: Sexual Content, Violence, Language, Social Behavior, Consumerism, and Drug/Tobacco/Alcohol. Your bases are fully covered here, as it provides information for things I wouldn’t have even thought to include. Even the most protective parent can be satisfied.

So there you go, kudos to Netflix for providing this feature that every parent should be using. There is no reason to go into a theater or to rent uneducated. Now, if Netflix would only promote this valuable feature more.

This post is guest-authored by Luke Stay – you can find him on his blog, AfroWhitey.com, on Twitter, or on his Facebook Page. Luke is Jesse’s younger brother.