Facebook has begun expanding the reach of its “Like” feature a little more, by sending out customised printed “Like” stickers to a certain number of businesses who have existing fan pages on the social network.

These window decals give the company’s Facebook fan page URL, as well as instructions for “liking” the business instantly via SMS. Included with the customised sticker is a letter offering a few tips for having a successful Facebook fan page, as well as a coupon code good for $25 worth of Facebook advertising.

This is a pretty smart and inexpensive way for Facebook to – amongst other things – grow their user base even further by getting other businesses to do their advertising for them, ensure that businesses use Facebook consistently to communicate with their customers, and introduce small businesses to the Facebook advertising platform.

Digital Cowboys is a monthly get-together held in Cape Town, and is open to anyone involved in the online marketing and digital advertising industry. The next event is happening on Wednesday 28 April at Café Chic (7 Breda Street, Gardens), from 4 to 7pm.

For any other information, you can contact Sean Riley on 021 467 8900.

Visit the Digital Cowboys website to read about past events.

Guest post written by Marc Aston

Marc is always looking for ways to help bloggers monetise their content and are constantly exploring different advertising networks to see which generates the best return.

Initially we were reluctant to try out EasyAds from OfferForge as we were under the impression that it was little more than a rotating banner offering. However after taking a bit of time to further explore the offering and roll it out on a variety of our blogs, we have been quite impressed.

While we are relatively new to OfferForge, we’ve had our most successful month yet with converted leads and sales being credited to our account.

In a nutshell EasyAds displays three text adverts with thumbnails in a banner. Bundublog has been using the 468X60 and 160X300 sizes.

In theory the ads are supposed to “learn” which are the better performing campaigns and serve more of these to your blog. This will serve any of 50 plus adverts to the banner offering bloggers opportunities to monetize from pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale or pay-per-click campaigns.

As far as click through ratios (CTR) go, we have seen this improve to 0.78% from 0.68%.

For context, our CTR from OfferForge competitor TrafficSynergy is around 0.75%, but conversions from TrafficSynergy have been significantly lower than that of OfferForge.

The improved CTR we attribute to the text format which we think reduces some of the “banner blindness” that image only banners experience.

On the negative side we have picked up a couple of typo’s in the text ads which are glaringly obvious and need to be rectified. We are also not convinced that EasyAds is yet serving the most contextual ads to suit the blog content – e.g. on a financial blog we will see fashion and lifestyle products being advertised.

On the whole though, we believe that Easy Ads has been a positive revenue generator for some of the blogs on our platform.

About the reviewer

Marc Ashton runs Bundublog.com a free blogging platform aimed at the African continent. Apart from Bundublog, Marc’s company owns a number of industrial titles aimed at the education, metals and manufacturing industries.

A number of new features were announced yesterday at Facebook’s F8 developer conference in San Francisco. The most notable of these include the following social plugins:

1. The new “Like” button, which will be implemented on external sites across the web, including, for now, NYTimes.com, IMDb, CNN.com, TIME.com, LIFE.com, Fandango, NHL.com, USA Networks, Levis.com, Univision and ABC.com. When the user “likes” a product or article on one of these sites, that action will be shared with their friends on Facebook, and their friends will be able to comment on it there. In some cases, such as with IMDb, an item that is “liked” will be added to the user’s profile page under their interests. The item – in this case a movie – will then be able to send the user updates through their News Feed on Facebook.

2. Working alongside the new Like button, the Activity Feed surfaces the actions a user’s friends are taking on a website. If a user is logged into Facebook and then visits a site with this feature implemented, they will be able to see the articles and topics on the site that their friends are sharing, recommending and commenting on.

3. The Recommendations feature will highlight the content on the external site that is most popular with Facebook users, based on the number of “likes” each item receives.

The South Africa-based R&D division of Swiss company Telfree Communications recently developed an app offering a unified communications hub for smartphones. The software is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as with a range of other selected smartphones.

The Telfree app is the first app of its kind to allow users to receive calls through it even when it’s not running, thanks to Telfree’s Push Call technology. Other features include threaded SMS, instant messaging, and social network chat functionality.

Of interest to travellers is the fact that Telfree offers one global flat rate to fixed lines and mobile phones, and is free for calls between registered TelFree accounts – which means no more roaming costs.

To get connected, download the 30-day free trial of Telfree Mobile from the Telfree site, or send an SMS containing the word “telfree” to 39042.

Vodacom’s The Grid yesterday launched Legends of Echo, South Africa’s first multi-player, location-based social game for mobile phones.

The Echo is a parallel virtual universe based on the South African map, but instead of cities and skyscrapers, players will find that there are rolling green hills, rocky outcrops and valleys to explore.

Legends of Echo makes use of Vodacom’s Location-Based Services (LBS) to determine a player’s physical location; from their location, players can then explore their surroundings or move – virtually, of course – to anywhere else in South Africa to interact with other players in real time.

Real-world place names are used to navigate; so, for instance, a player could teleport from Bellville in Cape Town to Randburg in Johannesburg to battle another player.

In the game, five bloodlines (Air, Earth, Water, Fire and Industry), incorporating twenty characters, battle each other for domination. Each bloodline has specific abilities and traits with regard to weapon use and creation.

Apart from engaging in one-on-one battle, players can trade with each other or communicate via an in-game instant messaging system.

The object of the game is to become a legend of the Echo. To achieve this, players need to gain enough Legend Points to appear on the high score sheet, by battling other players, and obtaining advanced weapons and other items by exploration or trade with other players.

Vincent Maher, Portfolio Manager Social Media, Vodacom South Africa, says, “Legends of Echo combines the best in real-time Location-Based Services and mobile multiplayer gaming, in that it allows players across South Africa to interact in a virtual world that is linked to their real-life location – all via their cellphones. As such, it’s an exciting and entertaining extension of The Grid as the leading location-based social network in South Africa.”

The game is available for free as a Java download to cellphones. To play Legends of Echo, SMS ‘ECHO’ to 33313 (50c/SMS) or visit http://www.legendsofecho.mobi.

According to a review posted on Cult of Mac last week, the new iPhone OS4 beta preview user interface is still fairly buggy, with unexpected behaviour and crashes resulting from certain operations. Hopefully these bugs will be ironed out before the new operating system is released to consumers later this year.

Here are some of the new features of iPhone OS4 that were highlighted by the Cult of Mac reviewer:

• Auto-focus, auto white balance and auto exposure now work for video
• Messages can be set to show a character limit to the right of the text input box (but you won’t see it until you’ve typed at least 44 characters)
• Email gives you the option of sending a smaller version of an image to reduce message size
• A directional arrow appears in the notification bar to let you know when your location is being used by an app
• The Home and Lock screens can be customised just like on the iPad
• Similar to the Playstation network, Apple’s social gaming system, Apple Live, will allow you to log in using your Apple ID and find other gamers to play against

Check out some screenshots of iPhone OS4.

Image credit: cogdog

BetTech Gaming, a South Africa-based developer of gaming and betting software, recently secured a multi-million rand investment from 4Di Capital. The first product that BetTech plans to launch to the South African market is their Sports Book package, a fully integrated software platform that includes functionality such as risk management and reporting, event management and marketing, and an affiliate and white label system.

“In my opinion, most of the gaming related software platforms available in South Africa are faced with legacy type issues. They are outdated and are having to regularly redevelop and re-engineer to ensure that they keep abreast of market demand,” says BetTech director Jesse Hemson-Struthers.

BetTech intends to work with its development partners to produce cost-effective and future-proof products that offer flexible and modular betting channels, including web, mobile and call centre. The company’s aim is to use the South African setup as a springboard to expand into other rapidly developing sports betting markets such as India, South America and Asia.

BetTech director Mark Bosman says, “We are delighted to have 4Di Capital on board as our long term partner in this project – not only for their ability to provide a capital investment for our software development plans and operational setup but also because they are able to leverage off of their global network to assist in introducing BetTech Gaming and its products to the broader market. We feel that this is where the real long-term value will be added.”