Facebook Offering Free Antivirus Licenses

Facebook today announced the Antivirus Marketplace that’s offering its 900 million users free downloads and six-month licenses from several antivirus companies including Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, and Symantec. Aside from downloadable and installable malware protection, these five companies will also augment Facebook’s URL blacklist system to prevent malicious URLs from being shared on the network. This means that whenever you click a link on Facebook, not only will be it checked against Facebook’s blacklist, but also the blacklists provided by Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, and Symantec.

The free downloads and six-month licenses available via the Antivirus Marketplace are:

• Microsoft Security Essentials (free)
• McAfee Internet Security 2012
• Trend Micro internet security for PCs and Macs
• Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac, Home Edition
• Norton AntiVirus

Other than Microsoft Security Essentials, which is entirely free, each download is accompanied by six months of free updates, but users are limited to just one free antivirus application per Facebook account. Of course, if you have more than a couple of members in your household and all share the same PC you can each snag a 6-month license and stay protected for several years. It’s even likely that Facebook will sign-up even more antivirus companies into its marketplace.

[via Facebook]

Top 4 Facebook Fan Page Builders Compared

Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Blizzard Entertainment are just a few popular technology brands that have enjoyed amazing success on Facebook. They use their Facebook Fan pages to announce exciting new launches, push targeted promotional campaigns and share news and content with their users. This interaction generates valuable interest and insights that can't be gained anywhere else.

For individuals and small business owners, the idea of designing and managing a Facebook Fan Page can be a bit confusing. Facebook Fan Page builders make the process less complicated, and are an excellent, low-cost option for getting your business on Facebook. The best builders offer a variety of layouts, customization options and widgets. They are always on top of design trends, so your page has the latest and greatest features. Here are some of the best Facebook Fan Page builders, chosen for their exceptional style, function and support.

ShortStack

ShortStack is a free builder that uses a widget-driven layout, allowing you to add as many features as you wish in whatever order. Widgets include simple elements such as images, video or text all the way up to some really cool features such as Virtual Gifts, Friend Inviter and Galleries. ShortStack integrates with some popular tools too, including Foursquare, Twitter, Google Maps and MailChimp.

The Downside

ShortStack is free for smaller pages with less than 2000 likes. Once you pass that milestone, it is certainly worth celebrating, even if it means supporting a $30 subscription fee for your Fan Page service. Subscriptions offer the added benefit of removing the ShortStack logo, adding a photo upload/vote system, access to premium support and data export. By the time you have more than 2000 likes, you will want access to analytics, and unfortunately ShortStack charges $75-300 to get access to that feature. This builder does not offer a library of graphics or image, so you must come prepared with a design plan. You also don't have as much design freedom as some other builders unless you are familiar with CSS or HTML.

Why It's Really Awesome

Other than being free up to 2000 likes and packed with features, ShortStack offers a unique widget scheduling feature for creating dynamically changing pages or content to meet the needs of a marketing campaign or holiday launch. You are also given access to the page stylesheets via a CSS editor, and can easily implement your own JavaScript plugins or snippets. The interface is very easy to understand and caters to both novices and advanced users alike.

Wix Fan Page Builder

Millions of people have designed a website with the Wix website builder, which is now gaining momentum with their Facebook Fan Page builder and iFrame tab app "Wix Your Page." Unlike other builders on this list, the Wix builder is a complete website creation suite for designing multi-pages in Flash or (coming in March) HTML5.

The Downside

The Facebook Fan Page builder is a bit more limited than the full page builder, but integrates an iFrame tab app for instant publishing to Facebook. The builder is currently only in Flash, which may not be best if mobile traffic is a concern, but the release of the new HTML5 builder should offset this drawback. Wix does charge a premium subscription fee if you want access to analytics and advanced features such as full eCommerce pages or reveal pages/fan gates.

Why It's So Awesome

The Wix Builder uses a drag-and-drop interface to allow novices and designers to create layouts in a completely visual way without having to edit code. Every element can be styled and customized and take advantage of the huge library of effects, animations and behaviors. Wix also offers graphics, design elements and a photo library to get you started. Their widget library includes video, galleries, slideshows, forms, shopping carts, Google maps and the ability to insert your own HTML or JavaScript if needed. It is the most flexible and feature-packed option on this list, and is also free.

Faceit Pages

Faceit Pages was developed with business users in mind, combining a selection of Facebook page templates with an easy customization system, a huge library of Facebook apps and integrated analytics.

The Downside

Faceit's Facebook Page "Do-It Yourself Designer" is the most limited of the five builders featured here, relying on pre-formatted layouts and allowing little wiggle-room for changing styles or creating completely bespoke designs without embedding an entire second webpage. Integrating Facebook apps instead of using HTML widgets puts added dependency on Faceit to keep up with Facebook's constantly changing standards and development platform, and they do not offer any eCommerce solutions.

Why It's Awesome

Like ShortStack, Faceit offers more than 20 apps you can use to build your Fan page. They offer instant publishing, fan gates, promotion and lead generation tools and beautiful reports. The premium subscriptions are very affordable in comparison to other offerings, starting at 8$. The designer itself is extremely straightforward, making this a great option for informational pages, bloggers or individuals who are completely new to Facebook Fan Pages.

PageModo

PageModo's Fanpage builder combines fresh templates, fonts and color palettes to help individuals and businesses create professional-looking pages quickly. As an added bonus, they offer page management and marketing tools, analytics and instant Facebook publishing without the need for additional apps or controls.

The Downside

PageModo's design options may be too limited for some, only allowing basic styling such as colors or borders, image upload and font selection. You also give up a wide selection of widgets such as those found in Wix or ShortStack in exchange for more design guidance, making this a better solution for beginners or resellers. The free option is also limited to one page and no extras, but you can preview the full suite for 30 days.

Why It's Awesome

PageModo's Pagebuilder has the lowest premium price plan at $13 for full features, and it’s intuitive interface is a breeze for adding pictures, videos, fonts, background colors and more. The templates are well-designed and keep up with today's design trends. Subscriptions even get you access to Pro Templates which include support for coupons and other eCommerce features.

Have you found an excellent Facebook builder that isn't featured here? Let us know in the comments!

This is a guest article by Vail Joy.

+Vail Joy is a professional writer, designer and developer with a vibrant background in music business, photography and social media. When she is not contributing her expertise to blogs and e-zines, she is building HTML websites and slaying dragons for Obox Design.

Facebook Timeline Movie Maker

Ever wanted to create a movie about yourself, and star in it as well? Now you can, thanks to a new Facebook app called Timeline Movie Maker that takes content from your Facebook timeline and creates a movie highlighting the special moments of your life. Timeline Movie Maker was created with marketing agency Definition6, and it will only work for users who have upgraded to the timeline profile.

Simply go to the www.timelinemoviemaker.com and click "make your movie". Install the app like any other Facebook app and grant it permission to access nearly your entire Facebook content including your e-mail address, your profile info (activities, birthday, hometown, Likes, location, relationship status, religious views, political views, and work history), as well as your stories (events, photos, videos, and posts with location) -  after all, it’s going to make a movie about your life! If you are willing to allow the invasion, it will give you back a nice and nostalgic 1 minute-long clip about your life.

The movie looks exactly like the Timeline promo video on www.facebook.com/about/timeline but starring your profile instead. Timeline Movie Maker clearly works for only those users who share plenty of pictures and videos on Facebook. The app will need a ton of these to produce a watchable movie.

Once the movie is done creating, users can edit and replace images, videos, and check-ins that appear as well as select from various soundtrack options (original, nostalgic, cinematic, romantic, playful). The completed movies can be shared via Facebook. Disappointingly, there is no option to post the finished product to YouTube or download the movie.

The app is an obvious attempt by Facebook to build up hype around Timeline. Last week, the company announced that they will start pushing Timeline to all of its users, so you better start getting used to it.

5 Tips to Streamline Your Facebook Feed

In recent months, Facebook has been revolutionizing how it formats information and connects it together, adding features like News Feed Sponsored Stories, friend lists and Subscriptions.

Facebook will inevitably continue to roll out new apps and features, and your News Feed will continue to grow more crowded. You probably already have a friend or two that posts anything and everything, which doesn't help an already crazy news feed you can't hope to keep up with. Here are a handful of easy ways to streamline your Facebook News Feed to increase efficiency and help you stay in touch with what matters to you.

Limit Posting to your Timeline

Not everyone has this problem, but if you belong to a particularly chatty group of friends or have connections with people that love posting stuff on your wall or timeline, it not only adds to your feed, but can mess up your profile page too.

Limit who can post directly to your timeline by adjusting your privacy settings. Click on the arrow in the upper-right of the Facebook bar and choose Privacy Settings. Click "Edit Settings" next to How You Connect. Choose "Only Me" from the drop-down menu for who can post on your timeline, and then click "Done."

Cut App Noise

Apps are the biggest annoyance on the Facebook News Feed, hands down. There are a couple ways to control how they behave.

Visit your News Feed (Home link) and hover over a post in the feed until the little menu icon appears in the upper-right corner. Click the menu and choose "Hide all posts by..." This option will clear posts from this person, page or app forever until you change it.

Your App settings are another way to eradicate apps from touching your profile or feed. Click on the main Facebook menu and choose "Account Settings." Click "Apps" on the left side to view the list of apps connected to your account. In most cases, you've probably only connected to an app once to take a quiz or play a game, and no longer need it connected. Remove or change app permissions by clicking on the "Edit" link next to each app.

You can do your part to help keep app spam off your friend's feeds by changing the setting under "Who can see posts and activity from this app..." to Only Me. Apps you would want to allow Friend or Public visibility might include connected social apps like Twitter.

Filter!

The more friends, pages and apps you accrue, the crazier your feed will get. Facebook Friend Lists help you create groups for segregating types of contacts into any category you desire. For example, you might create a list for close friends, work friends, social connections and business associates. Not only does this allow you to filter your feed, it provides a way to target specific people with specific content so your boss doesn't see your party pictures.

Create lists directly from the feed by clicking the "Lists" menu heading on the left. Click "Create List," give it a name, and add some friends.

To view updates from this list only, click it under your Lists heading on the left of your News Feed. To change the kind of updates you want to see from this list, click the Manage List drop-down menu in the upper-right and click the updates to remove, such as "Games" and "Comments and Likes."

Unsubscribe

Sometimes filtering isn't enough. If you have a contact that goes crazy on Facebook on a regular basis or posts content you just don't care for, you can filter them or simply unsubscribe from their feed altogether. This is usually a better alternative to unfriending them.

If you're on your News Feed when it occurs to you that you don't want to see updates from someone anymore, you can hide their posts the same way you hide app updates. Hover over the post and click the menu icon in the upper-right. Choose "Hide Updates From..." to hide the updates. Note that this may not hide updates from 3rd party apps that you may be using to view your Facebook updates, so Unsubscribe is the safest bet.

Visit the friend's Facebook profile and click the "Subscribed" button under the cover photo on the right side. Choose "Unsubscribe" from the list of options. You may also choose to simply filter this friend's specific update types you want to view.

Remove the Ticker

The News Ticker is a relatively new feature that adds a lot of unneeded clutter to the Facebook interface, listing recent status updates on the right side of your News Feed. Unfortunately there is no way to turn it off natively from the Facebook settings.Fortunately, there is a browser extension for that.

For Firefox Users

1. Click on Tools > Add-ons
2. Search for "Facebook Ticker Removal"
3. Click "Install" to the right of the Facebook Ticker Removal add-on.
4. Click "Restart Now."
5. Visit Facebook and enjoy the new white-space.

For Chrome Users

1. Visit the Chrome Web Store
2. Search for "Facebook Ticker Remover."
3. Add the "Facebook News Ticker Remover" to Chrome by clicking the Add button.
4. Visit Facebook and enjoy the new white-space.

If you want even more control over your Facebook pages, check out this writeup for using Greasemonkey scripts to remove just about anything from your feeds or profile.

This is a guest article by Vail Joy who is a long-time writer, designer and copy editor with 15 years of experience in corporate business writing, music journalism and internet media design. When she is not hard at work designing something, she loves writing for Wix.com, the free website builder.