We’ve often heard of people disabling the whole Facebook chat service because they don’t like to let everyone of their friends seeing that they’re online.

This might be even more necessary during exam, work, or quiet time. You may not want the whole of your social circle being able to talk to you, but allow specific people to get in touch.

This is now possible.  And there are 4 options…

1) Blacklisting – Everyone can see that you’re online except specific individuals.
We’re sure many will use this to block stalkers, ex-lovers and those chatterboxes.

2) Whitelisting – Only a specific group of people can see that you’re online.
Great for those study periods where you may still need to chat to people who actually know what you’re supposed to be learning.

3) Black-out – Noone can see you.
Great for when you’re at work, are extremely busy or just don’t want to speak to anyone.

and 4) Individual Black-listing – When you want to go offline to a user after a conversation.
Simply click the little gears icon on the chat window and select ‘Go offline to’.

To edit your visibility options, go to the gear icon on the chat bar and click ‘advanced options’.

Facebook have upgraded their overlay pop-up photo browser.

From our observations this is good for:

Brands/Users – More emphasis is given to the source of the image. Whether it be a user or a fan page, the prominence of the information may lead to more followers if a photo is re-shared.

Advertisers – More prominent display of ads as users browse through photos. This is mostly when there are only a few comments on a photo as ads take up the whitespace left over.

Users – It’s working pretty fast, and transitions between photos is fluid.

With the Initial Public Offer of $5billion worth of Facebook shares coupled with the expected drop in ad size, we see Facebook gearing up to generate more turn-over to keep its future shareholders happy. So long, as they keep providing us with a powerful communication, sharing and discovery tool, we don’t mind.

All in all, we’re happy. Are you?

We are currently busy testing an unreleased plugin that will allow users of our clients’ blogs to login and comment using any of the big three social networks.

The tests are currently being run on our very own OnThisIsland.com where we have successfully setup the additional login levels above the existing Facebook login system.

Once testing is complete, we will be pushing this system to all of our clients’ blogs over the coming weeks.

We look forward to facilitating them in the growth of their online communities.

Current Test Status:

Facebook – Live and Running

Twitter – Live and Running

Google+ – Pending a Fix

It is our great pleasure to announce the official signing of an agreement with Divine Advertising for the exclusive representation of Ektagon’s Social Media services in the Cypriot market.

Divine Advertising has been a leader in the Cypriot advertising market for some time now, having guided their many grateful clients through highly successful campaigns that span over two decades. Whether they are TV, Radio, Outdoor, Press, Printed Material, Guerrilla or Social campaigns, Divine Advertising has always been at the forefront of branding, communication and creative marketing.

Online marketing is no different. Divine Advertising began experimenting with the concept of social media marketing as early as 2007 when they started to work with our managing director Hector Kolonas with the idea of running a viral-beauty-contest through the OnThisIsland.com website. The agency has continued to work closely with Hector throughout the years whilst he finished his degree and setup this online marketing consultancy company.

We (ektagon) were formed to provide platforms that are Viral-by-Design and other online marketing and management solutions to companies across the U.K. and Europe. A year after being founded and after running several successful campaigns, an agreement has been officially announced forming an exclusive synergy between our young freelance consultancy company and the veterans of creativity and communications in the Cypriot market.

As of the 26th of January 2012, all Ektagon’s corporate platforms and social-media expertise are only available in Cyprus exclusively through Divine Advertising. Enhanced with long-term strategic planning, Divine’s creative ability, branding and superb offline-media support, this synergy guarantees 360 degree social-media campaigns that are aimed at creating an emphasis on fan engagement, not just fan or follower count.

George Theodorou, managing director of the reputable advertising agency commented “…this is an exceptional day, the agreement underlines Divine’s commitment to always maintain a lead in technology and new communications techniques”.

Keep an eye on our campaigns in the region by following Divine on twitter, circling them on Google+ or liking them on facebook.

Here’s a little something to put a smile on the faces of your social technophiles…

Facebook is being used to save the CIA millions of dollars, so they (the CIA) will stop funding Twitter and not worry about the Al Qaeda funded Foursquare site.

There are many sources of entertainment on the Internet, but the guys at The Onion News Network always crack us up.

In this FAKE news story the main headline is on how successful Facebook is working as the CIA’s spy programme.

Taken with a pinch of salt, it surely takes a stab at the whole idea of social networks, micro-blogging and celebrities.

We would like to remind you that The Onion News Network are satirical comedians, please don’t panic! hehe

Enjoy, and have a great week!

…well not really, but it’s amazing to see how the big blue social network has surpassed the popularity of almost all social networks, including the previously-popular local network that many countries enjoyed.

An analyst has been plotting the dominance of Facebook as the social network of choice across the world. There are only 10 countries that have an alternative social network as the most popular.

We all have goals to meet in order to consider myself successful. Today we were sent a link to a video about a guy with no house, no car, with two small bags of belongings and being made to move around a lot.

Our automatic response is to think that this poor fellow was down on his luck, needed a hand or even given some notice.

This is due to the fact that we believe that certain aspects of life are crucial to being ‘a successful person’. Basic needs are replaced by exaggerated commercially available assets, and the more you spend the more successful you appear.

But if we told you that this guy’s name was Tiesto, then everything changes.

He needs no house as he’s always on tour. He needs no car as he’s always in Limousines. He needs no more clothes as he can buy himself more whilst giving away his old ones. See the video we’re talking about here.

At the end of the day, don’t let society measure how and when you are ‘successful’. Follow your dreams, work hard and keep the passion!

We spent all of last night (well most of it) rebuilding the viral mechanics of the CyprusHasTalent.com platform so as to reopen the voting as soon as possible.

Voting is now re-enabled and the competition is running live and free again.
Click here to go and vote for who you think has the most talent on this island.

Users can now vote freely for between 3 and 5 contestants. There is no 30 min wait between votes as we found another way around the issue.

The Reason it broke:

Facebook has implemented a automated spam-avoidance system to protect their almost 1 billion users from spam-scams like the Amazon Scam we exposed recently.

Due to the immense passion of the fans behind the contestant for CyprusHasTalent, the automated sharing required for voting was unintentionally reported to Facebook as a spam virus.

We quickly rectified the system and adjusted the viral-component to only share every 3 hours, leaving users’ timelines and profiles less ‘spammy’.

Thanks for your understanding and happy voting.

Good luck to all the contestants from all of us at Ektagon!

A few hours ago it was reported that there was an internal leadership change. This is welcomed news to shareholders, BlackBerry enthusiasts and bloggers alike.

It’s been a horrible year for the guys at RIM with the failed PlayBook launch, copyright disputes about the name of their new OS and the outages we all remember so well.

Maybe we will finally see BlackBerry devices with Android OS?! One can only hope

Following weeks of speculation, it appears Research in Motion (RIM) is finally ready to oust Co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. The two are, according to a press release from RIM, stepping aside on Monday and will be replaced by company insider and former COO Thorsten Heins. (via Mashable)

It took a photo of Glen Johnson’s late goal (which cost William Hill £570,000) has ‘broken’ Facebook for thousands of users around the world.

What has happened is that the format of the picture didn’t allow the social network’s safe_image.php to resize it.

Hopefully such bugs will be weeded out shortly as this new level of the Open Graph is implemented more tightly into the Facebook infrastructure.

Thanks to all the users who submitted this bug to us.