After the release of the 'Pages' app in the last few days, this most recent app came as a bit of a supirse for me at least. Obviously it has been in the works for quite some time and is in no small part related to the aqquisition of Instagram.

I personally think the Instagram purchase was a defensive move more than anything.

So how is the app?

Fisrt impressions - It's good. It seems to have had more thought go into it than any of the other Facebook apps.

I was a little suprised for some reason to open straight into a stream of all the photo's from my personal facebook feed. I{'m not sure what I was expecting exactly, but probably the camera or camera roll, ready to upload my own pic to FB.

That said It ss very familiar to a user of other social photo apps like Instagram, picplz or even the Tumblr app.

The feed easily slides down to reveal your camera roll and the option to take a shot with your camera and upload. I'm impressed with the ability to select multiple images to add to one post and crop and add a filter to each image on the fly.

The filter functionality is nice and simple, very similar to instagram though with less dramatic filters at this stage.

Final thoughts

I'm imporessed with this first offering, and I think it is their best app so far.

I am however seriously wondering about the fragmentaion of Facebook on iOS with all the new apps available. It is getting hard to know which one to use when. I'll be interested to talk to users to see how this pans out.

So what will happen when they release a dedicated video app? that will give us 5 Facebook apps on iPhone - is that too many?

I remember a few years ago, I was having a conversation with a close friend who was describing a tv ad to me. We were laughing discussing how it was sucha great, entertaining concept that anybody who watched tv at the time would remember.

My firend said it was one of the best ads he'd ever seen.

But, I asked one simple question which turned the whole conversation upside down:

Who is the ad marketing?

Neither of us knew who the hell the company was, or what they sold. (turns out it was for the local lottery).

The takeaway from this post? Forget about 'creativity' and make sure your marketing talks to your target market and tells them what you sell and how to get it!

The only awards a successful marketer needs is are sales.

I love this infographic by Copyblogger

Like this graphic? Get more creativity and content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

Here are some awesome new tips and strategies for getting valuable backlinks that actually help your search rankings...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JohnChowDotCom/~3/VYVAVNrpckg/

I have to admit I had a few weird science teachers over the years. They can't have been all bad though because I ended up graduating university with a bachelor of science. Ok it's possible provbable I'm just as weird as them...

Anyway, I had one great science teacher though who was very cool... Don' get me wrong, he was weird alright, as in running twice a day weird, recycling like crazy before we even new what it was.. Oh and he had a cockroach farm!

Ok, this crazy scientist he taught me something that I have never forgotten. At the time I thought he was joking, and he probably was, but joking or not he was right.

Listen up, this is going to sound stupid, but the thing he told me was:

**Always bullshit to one decimal place!**

I told you...crazy right? But it is 100% true.

Ok, stick with me... In advertising, marketing and basically any communication, more specific information is more credible.

Not sure you believe me? Try this out:

Come visit us on a hot day. We have over 20 flavours of Gelato.

Vs

Come visit us on a hot day and try one of our 23 flavours of fresh Gelato.

OR how about:

Come in store for discounts on all our running shoes.

Vs

Come in store for 25% off all our running shoes

When you're specific your customers brain isn't trying to figure out how big the discount is going to be, you are either telling hte truth or lying... and they assume (hopefully correctly) that noone is going to outlright lie in an advert.

So you Gain more Trust

Brilliant isn't it... You can use that ;-)

I wonder how a sale would go with 25.3% off everything in store???

They seem to be doing what many of the larger social media services (bar Facebook) have struggled to do... Get average Internet users onboard!

By average users, I'm talking about my wife, my Mum, sister inlaw(s) and plenty of others who have had no interest in Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Google+ or any other Social media. And yeah, notice they are all woman?

I'm picking they are getting hooked on Pinterest because it is so visual. It's the closest service I've seen to a woman's magazine.

And it's easy.

In fact my wife said "it's like making my own magazine of cool things

"... Plus people get to see how cool I am."

This is looking like a huge opportunity for this in fashion or popular culture markets. Bloggers are reporting massive traffic and growth from Pinterest.
Check out this great case study: http://www.businessesgrow.com/2012/01/23/pinterest-drives-enormous-blog-and-b...

Are you using Pinterest for fun or marketing?

How small businesses can hit above their weight online.

6 Ways Content Marketing Helps Small Businesses Be BIG Online
http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/02/small-business-content-marketing/