A Win For Brands And Facebook Contests

Contests and giveaways are big business on social media. Customers love them for the free stuff for seemingly little effort, and brands take advantage of the clear CTA’s to boost marketing efforts. But if you have a business page, you’re aware how Page-based promotions can often be a pain, usually requiring third-party apps like North Social and pages of official rules.

Recently, Facebook made it easier for businesses to manage contests and promotions from their Facebook page, eliminating the need to go through these third-party apps and making it less of a hassle to collect entries through posts.

Now brand pages can host contests and sweepstakes directly on Page Timelines as well as in apps. Probably most exciting, businesses are now permitted to use Comments, Likes, even Message entries as voting mechanisms. Although, the two things they may not do are encourage users to tag themselves in content they are not actually in, which Facebook says will “maintain the accuracy of Page content.” Users also cannot Share posts on their personal timeline or those of their friends.

Before, the social network’s terms prohibited brands from using any of the website’s inherent push activities as entry into a contest or promotion (i.e. ‘Like or Share this post to be in the running…’ type of actions). To follow site’s terms of service, businesses instead had to rely on apps to collect entries, which can be cumbersome, and to do it well, a time-suck. Not to mention users really don’t prefer entering personal information into foreign text fields.

Businesses are still responsible for the “lawful operation of [the] promotion,” which includes official rules, offer terms and eligibility requirements, compliance with applicable rules and regulations. Promotions must also include a complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant, and acknowledgement that the promotion isn’t endorsed by Facebook.

Phew. There is still a slight runaround, but the biggest takeaway here is that you can now give CTA’s on Facebook that are inherent to the actual platform – a change that should have been made long ago. Now, here’s to hoping this doesn’t mean constant annoying content encouraging lame “Like this, or Like that” posts.

What do you think of the changes? Let us know in the comments below! 

Source: Facebook 

King James Holds Court

With the game just a few weeks away from release, NBA 2K14 could very well dominate the basketball paint again, with LeBron James of the Miami Heat taking center court and a number of features promising to entice basketball fans. 2K Sports has just released the latest official trailer for the game, which features plenty of slam-dunk action.

NBA 2K14 will release this October for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and later in the year for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Here Comes ‘Angry Birds Go!’

The Angry Birds have taken a few wild turns over the years, including a stop in Rio with the movie of the same name, not to mention the stellar Star Wars spinoffs. However, for its latest effort, Rovio is taking its crew to the open road. With Angry Birds Go!, the birds will go driving for the first time, with a little help from the racing crews over at Red Bull. Though game footage hasn’t been shown yet, this trailer does highlight what the development team had in mind for the project.

More details on Angry Birds Go! should emerge soon.

Unity Gets More Social

The partnership of Facebook and Unity became official back in March, and we’re about ready to see the results of it through the release of a new SDK. With this SDK, greater integration with the Unity game engine will allow developers to port their games to the social site with ease, which, in turn, should draw a bigger audience of gamers to the site.

“We want game developers to be able to publish into a large population,” said Facebook Product Manager for Games, George Lee. He stated that Facebook has 260 million monthly active users that take part in games, with numbers growing significantly in demographics.

Developers will also have access to the Parse plug-in, which in turn will help them with infrastructure.

Source: Mashable

Mini Cooper Thrill Ride

As part of its “Not Normal” campaign, MINI Canada and Anomaly recently teamed up for a new ad for the Cooper S models. In the ad, three cars are transformed to look like a roller coaster, with the roof and rear seats removed and replaced with coaster carts, frames, LED’s, decals and more. The driver then barrels the cars down the streets of Toronto at around 110 miles per hour.

You can see the effects of the transformation below.

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How Paradise Was Lost

Capcom launched its latest big-name sequel Lost Planet 3 this week. Developed by a new team this time around – Spark Unlimited – the third person action/adventure focuses more on story than the previous games, but still delivers plenty of action.

The game focuses on Jim Peyton, a Utility Rig pilot who finds himself torn between the alliances of his human crew and the devastating aliens that are invading the frozen space colony of E.D.N. III. It features plenty of action, including the ability to climb into a giant mech.

You can watch the launch trailer for the game below. Lost Planet 3 is available now for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

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