Facebook Page owners this week have noticed that their Page Insights data has not been updated since last week, as far back as May 13. Facebook has confirmed the issue with The Next Web and is currently working on a fix.

“Page Insights data from 5/13 onward is currently delayed in Page Insights,” a Facebook spokesperson told TNW. “This is a known issue, and we are working to update our systems ASAP.”

In a thread on the Facebook Community Forum, over 30 comments were posted this Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as users realized the issue has persisted for much longer than it should have. While the thread was started six months ago by a user seeing a similar issue last year, all replies on it have been about the issue from this week from users searching for an explanation.

The only reply from a Facebook Help Team employee by the name of “Aiden.” He pointed to a Help Center link with this explanation:

When you visit your Page Insights, you should see data about how people have been using your Page. It takes about 2 days for today’s data to start showing up. If your Page’s insights aren’t loading correctly, let us know.

Our Community Director Matt Navarra checked our own Facebook Page and found that it isn’t showing Insight Data past May 15. Another commenter noted that she wasn’t seeing data beyond the 13th until today, when it updated to the 15th — either way it’s still more than a week behind.

Given that this issue has been going on for 11 days, Page owners are understandably getting frustrated as they are unable to track their campaigns and promotions. This prompted us to look into the problem and get in touch with Facebook for a better explanation.

We’ll update this article when the company fixes the issue and if it shares more details.

See also – Facebook adds realtime Page updates and Graph Search insights for developers

Top Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Six years ago, Facebook unveiled its Platform service to allow third-party developers to integrate its social graph into their apps. Today, the company has revealed its enormous growth: 550 million people are having social experiences each month and more than 1 billion stories are being shared daily. It also shared insights into Platform’s future and how Parse will be integrated.

At a whiteboarding session, Facebook’s Director of Developer Relations, Doug Purdy, shared a brief history about the Platform. Originally called Facebook Canvas, the service was intended to help the company create a developer ecosystem.

Purdy believed that applications and its experience focused around the user was much better than if it was just focused on the technology. Facebook launched the product to allow third-party developers to tie back into Facebook so that stories and memories can be shared on a user’s Timeline while also integrating data from the social network into their apps.

In the end, Purdy spoke about the future of Facebook Platform and what users and developers could come to expect within the next couple of years. It’s clearly apparent now that Platform has seen incredible success in its short six year history. However, to enhance the social experience, Facebook says that it’s focusing on four key areas:

Identity

Purdy says that Facebook is focusing on ways to bring content and data that users care about into third-party apps and back in order to create a much more personalized experience. The company hopes to achieve this primarily through improvements in its Login with Facebook protocol. Last April, the company launched some updates whereby users were able to better manage what is being shared both with Facebook and also with third-party apps.

This recent Login update was said to be well-received by both users and developers. In the end, Facebook says it’s about giving users more control and trust.

Open Graphs

Facebook says that a lot of its focus will be around the Timeline where it’s believed to have a home for third-party app activity. Users can see the updated timeline now whereby any activity from services around movies, Pinterest, books you read, music, and check-ins, are now displayed on the Timeline. Purdy tells us that because people are living their lives on their mobile device, it’s natural for content to be shared from apps to Facebook. Additionally, he said that it’s an “awesome” surface for discovering things that people are doing.

Ads

Simply having an app isn’t enough — it’s about promotion. Facebook has set out to support developers that tie in to its Platform. It was at this point when Purdy highlighted the company’s mobile app install ads, which it launched in October 2012.

App Services

In an area where Facebook’s acquisition of Parse comes into play, the company is looking to help app developers create a cross-platform experience, so that it’s not only available on Facebook, but also iOS and Android devices. The company shared that while it’s helping to create more cross-platform apps, but also allow users to interact with services across any devices.

Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Facebook on Monday announced the release of its native Share Dialog, which lets iOS developers add sharing capabilities from the social network to their app with just one line of code. The feature is now available in the Facebook SDK for iOS, which you can download directly from here.

The Share Dialog also improves upon the iOS 6 share sheet by adding support for publishing Open Graph actions. While app developers will certainly appreciate that adding the functionality only requires one line of code, the real advantage is for users.

The Share Dialog means users can share activity from an app straight to Facebook without needing to login to the social network first. Facebook claims this eliminates one to three extra steps required for login when sharing via the feed dialog.

At the same time, it means Facebook users can tag friends, and overall use a better sharing dialog box from within apps. For users, Facebook says this translates into “a more meaningful and engaging” experience while for developers, the company says it means “even more people connect with your app.”

Ever since introducing the Share button, Facebook has been pushing it as a more expansive version of the Like button. It’s a smart move to keep Likes around while also offering Shares for those users who want to do more than just quickly show they appreciate a piece of content.

At the same time, because the Share button offers so many more options, it works great for spreading Facebook content with the potential of having it go viral. If you’re an app developer, you might want to be part of such an ecosystem, an idea which the company naturally wants to encourage.

In the grand scheme of things, this a small update to the Facebook SDK for iOS (this is version 3.5.1 while 3.5 arrived last month). Still, Facebook likely wants to break it out separately because the company hopes the dropped beta tag will spur some adoption from iOS app developers.

Top Image Credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

On May 18th, 2012, Facebook went public at a per-share price of $38. The company experienced a brief gain, spiking into the 40s, but ended its first day of trading just a few cents above the set $38 price.

The following days saw the stock decline, under its listing price. The stock would fall as low as $17.55 before it began a period of recovery. As Facebook has grown its income from mobile users, and proven that its desktop market share isn’t transitory, investors have warmed to its shares.

Facebook has since recovered from its lows, and is now closing its first year as a public company at $26.25. That’s a 30.9 percent decline from its IPO price, but is up essentially 50% from its historic, 52 week low. Facebook investors that bought the company when it was mired in the doldrums have done well. Folks who bought on day one have endured nothing but decline, of varying degrees, since their purchase.

In its most recent quarter, Facebook bested revenue expectations, with top line of $1.46 billion. However, it missed forecasted profit by reporting just $0.12 per share in earnings. Facebook price-earnings ratio is remarkably high.

Today, Facebook closed regular trading worth $63.47 billion. When it went public, the company was valued at over $104 billion.

In retrospect, Facebook is now a much larger company, with stronger profits and revenues. And investors are valuing below the price that the market bore when it went public. It’s a lesson worth remembering; what the market will allow in an IPO doesn’t always fully reflect the value of a company.

Zynga and Groupon investors can confirm the idea.

Facebook finds itself in a strong posistion, with plenty of cash, profits, and growing revenues. It’s work in mobile is also to its benefit, at once expanding its core offerings in the space, and also enjoying the quick growth of Instagram, which it wholly owns.

A final note: Instagram’s final purchase price was $715 million. Why not the oft floated $1 billion figure that was offered? The deal had a huge stock component. And as Facebook’s stock fell, so too did the value of the deal.

Market declines regardless, in the past year Facebook’s usership, incomes, user activity are all up and to the right. Botched IPO or not, Facebook is healthy.

 Image EMMANUEL DUNAND for AFP / Getty Images

All relevant data via Google Finance.

There’s a change at the top at Facebook….in Japan, where the company has hired former McDonalds and Boston Consulting Group marketing exec Atsushi Iwashita as its new Managing Director.

The news is reported in Markezine — via Asiajin – although Iwashita, who was most recently CEO at brand consultancy firm Interbrand Japan, is still to update his LinkedIn profile to reflect his new role. The move comes at an interesting time for social networks in the country, as the top sites are refocusing their management to capture young audiences and double-down on mobile.

Local rival Mixi replaced its founder with a new (and notably very young) CEO on Monday. Now 30-year-old Yusuke Asakura will lead the company, becoming only the second CEO in Mixi’s 9-year history.

That change to inject more youth and appeal comes in response to Mixi’s continued decline and Facebook’s growth in Japan. Last September, Facebook overtook Mixi as it hit 15 million monthly active users in the country. That was a significant moment since Japan had been one of the few remaining markets where Facebook was not the dominant network.

Asiajin speculates that the two are near neck-and-neck right now, so there’s still all to play for in the lucrative market, where Twitter is actually the most popular social service (thanks to its simple and efficient mobile experience).

Locally developed messaging app Line has shown the kinds of revenues that social services can make in the country. A whopping 80 percent of the $58 million revenue it made in Q1 2013 came via Japan, and Mixi and Facebook will be aiming to grow their user base and presence on mobile in pursuit of a piece of that pie.

You can also add private social network Path to that list too.

The company launched its Asia-inspired Path 3.0 service, featuring stickers and virtual content popular in the continent, in March having appointed a general manager for Japan/Asia last year. Path has long said that Asia is its fastest growing region, with Japan and Korea two of its key markets.

Headline image via laughingsquid / Flickr

Instagram on Thursday reminded all its users that today is the day its new “Photos of You” section is being turned on for everyone. This means everyone who can currently see your profile is now able to see all the pictures that you have been tagged in.

The feature was first announced two weeks ago but was only available if you chose to opt-in. Now it’s available for everyone, but thankfully you can choose whether photos others add of you appear on your profile automatically or only once you select them.

If you don’t want pictures of you to show up automatically, turn on the option to manually select which photos appear on your profile by following these three steps:

1. Go to your profile and tap the icon for all photos you’re tagged in.
2. Tap the Android menu icon or the iPhone wrench icon in the top-right corner.
3. Tap “Add Manually.”

These instructions remind us that Instagram is still not available for Windows Phone nor BlackBerry. We still think this will change in the coming months, as bringing in more potential users is always more important than adding incremental features like this one:

The new “Photos of You” section is clearly influenced by Facebook, Instagram’s parent company. The world’s largest social network has been keeping track of photos people are tagged in for years. On Instagram though, only the taker of a photo is able to tag people in it, unlike on Facebook where other people can suggest tags of themselves or others.

It’s also one of those features that will be useful whenever Instagram finally decides to offer a full-blown website. There needs to be more on those large screens than just photos and ads.

See also – An inside look at Instagram’s brand new cleaner, more professional logo and Thanks to Facebook Home, HTC First is the first phone to pre-load Instagram

Top Image Credit: Elliot Bennett

Facebook is becoming a mobile company — or rather a “mobile best” one if you believe founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It’s no secret that the company has had its hiccups when it comes to mobile applications, but in a new post on its engineering blog, Facebook reveals a build system that it uses to produce Android apps it calls Buck. Today, that system has gone open source and is available on Github.

Written by Michael Bolin, a software engineer at the social networking company, the post reveals that one of the plights Facebook faced was the inability of the standard set of Android tools to keep up with the company’s growth. It wasn’t until July 2012 that Bolin came up with a working prototype of Buck, what would soon be its newest Android build system.

The idea came up during Bolin’s first hackathon at the company. His objective: Create a build tool that favored the creation of many small modules rather than a handful of large modules. Earlier that year, Facebook had switched from building Webview apps to more native ones on Android. Previously, the company’s engineers had written a plethora of Java code, which just wasn’t able to keep up.

Buck went live a month after the hackathon and based on Bolin’s post, seems to achieve its purpose. A couple of weeks later, all build.xml files were removed from Facebook’s Android repository. In his own words:

It took less time to download Buck’s source code, build it from scratch, and then build the Android app with Buck than it took to build the Android app with Ant. From Day 1, Buck was twice as fast as Ant, cutting Facebook for Android app build times down from 3:40 to 1:30.

The rest of his post is rather technical in nature, but feel free to take a look through if you’re so inclined. Suffice it to say, Buck appears to have helped Facebook streamline all of its Android code and provides a useful design that helps aid in the development of smaller apps.

Here’s a video of Bolin talking about Buck at the Mobile DevCon conference in New York and how it’s now available as open source:

Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Facebook on Tuesday announced it has completed rolling out the new sections on its Timeline profiles to everyone. Furthermore, the company says users are now collectively adding almost 200 million items daily.

Two months ago, Facebook debuted the new one-column Timeline. The company emphasized the redesigned sections on user profiles that let people have one place to add items of interest.

Yet everyone realized this was Facebook’s way of admitting the previous two-column design for posts simply wasn’t working. In case you’ve abandoned the service, here’s the new one-column Timeline (posts appear on the right side, and only on the right side, while everything else is on the left):

Content from apps are now more prominent as they have their own sections in the left column of the Timeline and on the About tab. You can add content to the books, music, movies, TV, and fitness sections manually or by choosing to include content from the apps you use. As of today, the music section can play songs Liked by friends with just one click, workouts can be tracked with friends in the fitness section, and you can also rate content directly on people’s Timelines and add ratings from apps:

You can also add an app as a stand-alone section on your Timeline and About page. Each app section gets one or more collections to showcase whatever you want from the app, and developers have the option to configure the data that appears.

The Facebook-owned Instagram app section displays a user’s photos and those they like:

Previously, only top-ranked Open Graph stories and aggregations would appear on a person’s Timeline. Now, when someone adds an app section, it will appear in the same place until they edit its order or visibility.

To add an app as a section, you need to install it and then click the “Add to Profile” button on its app section page. Developers can encourage their users to add their app by linking to it on Web or invoking it on mobile.

If you’re a developer yourself, Facebook has added a new “Collections” tab to help you set up app sections. The company also offers a few best practices:

• Give people a way to add your custom section to timeline: Consider including a URL in your app to give your users a preview of your section and help them decide whether to add it to timeline.
• Choose the right template for your section: Apps with great visual content should use the gallery template to draw people’s attention, and there are also list and map templates.
• Focus on quality and completeness before submitting your section for approval: To make the review process simple, submit your section only after making sure your object images and descriptions are complete and look great from the perspective of your users.

Developers will need to submit collections for review to Facebook. If you’re interested, check out the newly published documentation.

Top Image Credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Facebook on Monday updated its native iOS app with new photo viewer options, improvements to Places and Events on the iPhone, as well as the new News Feed. You can grab the latest version now from Apple’s App Store.

When viewing a photo, you can now directly save and share it (previously you could only Like, comment on, or tag friends in it). You can also now directly set a photo as your profile picture, though you’ll probably (and hopefully) be using this option a little less frequently than the others.

The next two updates are specifically for the iPhone. Facebook says it has improved Places editing when you’re checking in on Apple’s flagship device and improved the load times for Events. The former will only be useful for those who check in often but faster Events is likely a much-wanted improvement for all.

The full Facebook 6.1 for iOS changelog is as follows:

• Photo viewer button lets you save, share or make profile picture.
• Improved places editing when checking in on iPhone.
• Events load faster on iPhone.

Interestingly, iOS users are reporting that this Facebook update has a beta-like icon. Furthermore, those who have downloaded the latest version of the app are seeing the new News Feed. Given that this isn’t in the changelog, we think the two may be related.

Either way, we have confirmed that both are showing up for us on the iPhone and the iPad.

Here’s the beta icon:

Here’s the new News Feed:

We have contacted Facebook for more information. We will update this article if we hear back.

Update: Facebook pushed out another update to remove the beta icon.

Top Image Credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.

Microsoft has discovered a new piece of malware in the form of a Google Chrome extension and Firefox add-on that can hijack Facebook accounts. It does not appear that there are equivalent plugins for Internet Explorer nor Safari.

The threat, detected by Microsoft as Trojan:JS/Febipos.A, was first found making the rounds in Brazil. Like other browser plugins, it attempts to keep itself updated with the latest instructions from its malware authors.

The trojan in question checks to see if the current user is logged-in to Facebook. If you are, it attempts to download a configuration file that includes a list of commands. Depending on the file, Microsoft has found the malware is capable of doing any of the following with the user’s Facebook profile: Like a page, share content, post on people’s profiles, comment on other posts, join a group, invite friends to a group, and chat with friends.

Microsoft monitored a Facebook Page that the plugin often posted on and noticed that its Likes and comments increased, suggesting that users are actively installing these plugins. It’s not clear how criminals are getting users to install them, but they are likely using basic social engineering tactics employed in email and social networking spam.

Here is what Microsoft concludes in its analysis:

There may be more to this threat because it can change its messages, URLs, Facebook pages and other activity at any time. In any case, we recommend you always keep your security products updated with the latest definitions to help avoid infection.

In other words, while the threat seems to be currently focused on targeting Facebook users in Brazil (its messages are all written in Brazilian Portuguese), it’s easy to see how the threat could be modified to target more users. The fact that it uses a configuration file shows that the criminals specifically designed it to be modular.

The good news here is that this malware currently isn’t widespread. Nevertheless, you should make a point to only install browser extensions and add-ons from trusted sources such as the Chrome Web Store and Add-ons for Firefox.

See also – Google further secures Chrome against malicious extensions

Top Image Credit: spencereholtaway / Flickr

Microsoft on Friday announced it has once again expanded Bing’s Facebook integration. Not only can you see relevant Facebook posts in the search engine’s social sidebar, but you can now comment on them and Like them as well.

Bing has included Likes, photos, and profile information from Facebook for a while in its social sidebar. At the start of the year, Microsoft added status updates, shared links, and comments for more context. Now it’s letting you interact with said content, all without leaving the Bing search page.

Here’s the commenting feature in action:

Nektarios Ioannides, Bing’s Program Manager, offers an example to explain how this could potentially improve your search experience:

Let’s say I’m searching for Beyoncé tickets because I know she is coming to town soon. I can see that my friend has recently posted that she has an extra ticket to the show. Now without leaving the Bing results page, I comment directly to her post letting her know that I’d love to join her for the concert. I’ve gone from simply browsing to attending a concert in just a few easy steps – all thanks to Bing.

All of this will only work if you connect your Facebook account to Bing. Microsoft has previously promised to “honor all of your existing Facebook privacy settings, nothing is shared automatically, you only see what your friends give you permission to see (though their Facebook settings) so you only share what you want to share.”

Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t shared data in regards to how many Bing users have actually gone and connected their Facebook account to Bing. Either Microsoft is extremely confident that its social search strategy will pay off, or users are actually taking advantage and the company is finding it worth the engineering resources to keep adding more and more Facebook features to Bing. Time will tell.

See also – Microsoft: Facebook’s Graph Search is a “unified search experience” with Bing technology

Top Image credit: Leszek Nowak

Yesterday Facebook revealed that Facebook Home, its Android ‘launcher’ aimed at making Facebook the center of smartphones, had passed 1 million downloads, and now the software has expanded its support to include the Samsung Galaxy S4 and other devices, in an unofficial capacity.

Home was initially only available to owners of a select few devices — including the Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note II, HTC One X and HTC One X+ — when it launched four weeks ago. But now, Android Central notes – via The Verge — that the range has been quietly extended to include new phones, most notably the new Samsung flagship.

Details of new support have not made their way to the Facebook Home app. Instead Android Central noticed the Facebook app on the Galaxy S4 was updated to include a ‘Use Home Anyway’ notice, which, when tapped, proceeded to load the Android launcher. There is no such notification for the HTC One, which is now able to run the software despite no update to the Facebook Home changelog.

The Galaxy S4 and HTC One were announced as original launch partners, but, up until now, had not been supported.

The change is likely to have been set to go live — perhaps at midnight West Coast time — so it seems likely that we can expect an official announcement from the social network very soon.

For now, this shortcut will be of interest to those wanting to take the software for a spin, but hoards of new sign-ups aren’t likely until official support arrives and Facebook (and partners) begin making noise about the update.

Widening support for Facebook Home is going to be key if Facebook is going to get genuine mileage from the software. Though it says it is happy with the progress, a million downloads represents a small fraction of its 1 billion plus user base. That’s not to mention that the number of active users is likely some way lower than the 1 million installs.

Facebook said yesterday that Home will get new updates every four weeks, and adding support for new devices is likely to be a big part of that.

The fragmentation of the Android platforms and differences between devices, makes developing software for all phones on the platform a more tricky process than for iOS, Windows Phone and others.

Headline image via Greg Wood / Getty

After a tweet this morning by New York Times writer Jenna Wortham caused some buzz, we did some digging and it looks like Instagram is not notifying users when screenshots are taken of their photos. Wortham mentioned that her sister was noticing it on some of her photos and that it didn’t appear to be active across all accounts. Update below.

We did some investigation of our own, trying to duplicate it on TNW accounts and couldn’t get any notifications to pop. The only other mention that we could find was three days ago, when a Twitter user commented on similar behavior on his account. We felt that the notifications could actually be the related to the new tagging feature that Instagram introduced, called Photos of You. The notification for that feature reads: “x has taken a photo of you.”

We reached out to Instagram and a representative confirmed that this isn’t a current feature of Instagram, stating that “we aren’t working on this feature,” and drew attention to the new Photos of You feature as a possible cause.

This type of ‘screenshot warning’ behavior is similar to the way that hot social sharing app Snapchat works. If a user takes a screenshot, the original poster receives a notification. Sharing screenshots of posts is a well-worn Instagram tradition. The hashtag ‘screenshots’, while not completely populated with images of Instagram images, holds some 500,000 entries alone.

Instagram now tells the person when you screenshot their picture? ahhhh HELL NAH :(

— #1League (@CheefDaReefa) May 9, 2013

Responses to Wortham’s initial tweet have been pouring in at a rate of several a minute in the couple hours since the initial post. Most of them have been highly negative.

Update: It looks like it was indeed the Photos of You feature at work:

Ah. To clarify re: Instagram, some1 screenshotted my sister’s pic, then reposted it & tagged her. She misunderstood the notification (pt 1)

— Jenna Wortham ♥ (@jennydeluxe) May 9, 2013

Facebook has revealed that its Home launcher for Android devices has been downloaded 1 million times from the Google Play store. Having launched four weeks ago, the social networking company shared that while this supposed number falls in line with its expectations, there are some things that it has received feedback on. For those Facebook Home users, a new update is being released today, as part of its “new every four week” cycle.

Launched to much buzz, Facebook Home is a layer that resides on top of the Android operating system. Last month, company founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced several features that came with Home, including chat heads. The idea behind this whole concept was to showcase that Facebook had moved beyond mobile-first and into “mobile-best” — a step it says is where users are connected with their friends and content where things can also be shared and communicated.

By the numbers

At a Facebook whiteboarding session, the company shared some interesting metrics relating to engagement and messaging — two key things related to Home.

With regards to engagement, Facebook is looking at how people are interacting with the social network through News Feed through Home, along with how long people are spending with the launcher. The company said that it has seen a 25 percent increase in engagement since Home was released.

With messaging, it seems the company is fascinated with seeing how users interacted with chat heads. Specifically, it’s tracking two metrics: participation (how many people are using it within Facebook), and volume (how many messages being sent). With this feature, Facebook says that it is seeing a 7 percent increase in participation and 10 percent increase in volume.

It’s important to note that the above metrics are rather subjective since Facebook has not revealed any specific numbers.

What’s more, the 1 million downloads is also something to take with a grain of salt because the company didn’t reveal how many of those are active users. Soon after its launch, the reviews for Facebook Home were rather negative. What’s more, with the HTC First recently being heavily discounted to $0.99 by AT&T, one must wonder how the launcher’s performance and phone’s sale really is. Facebook would not comment about AT&T’s decision.

New features coming in the future

In the next couple of months, Facebook will also be revealing several new features for Home, including a new user experience (codenamed “Blue’s Clues“), a dock, and a dash bar. With “Blue’s Clues”, the idea is to help make Home less confusing and frustrating to use.

One of the feedbacks that Facebook has received from its users is that Home is missing a dock, that ever-present spot on the bottom of the screen that displays the apps that are always there and available. Another point of contention by users is with chat heads — there was no way to initiate a conversation easily. With dash bar, Home will have a feature akin to a buddy list on AIM that can be used for quick referencing.

Only four devices officially supported

During the whiteboarding session, Adam Mosseri, Director of Product, commented on the fact that there is a unofficial Home APK floating out in the marketplace to get the launcher out into unsupported phones. Facebook revealed that there are more than 10,000 users out there using the hacked Home APK.

Currently there are only four devices officially supported, but Mosseri hinted that there are two other devices that are being tested, but won’t be released until months later.

The first update for Facebook’s main app for Android

Today’s update will not be anything major. Facebook says that it will be bug fixes and other minor improvements. It will be an update for the main Facebook app on Android.

Future updates are planned to be released every four weeks, with the exception of July — that month, the schedule falls on the Fourth of July so the company is delaying it by a week.

➤ Facebook Home

➤ Facebook for Google Play

Facebook is in the final stages of negotiation with crowd-sourced traffic and navigation app maker Waze for an Instagram-sized acquisition of the Israeli company, reports local business publication Calcalist.

According to Calcalist reporter Assaf Gilad, who has a track record of getting things like this right (and then some), Facebook is in ‘advanced talks’ to buy Waze for $800 million to $1 billion in another move to beef up its mobile presence across platforms and geographies.

We should note that this isn’t the first time rumors about a Facebook-Waze acquisition have surfaced.

In the beginning of this year, Waze was rumored to be in talks with Apple for an acquisition, but these reports turned out to be, well, vapor.

Microsoft has in the past also been rumored to be interested in picking up Waze, but it seems the Redmond software giant has been working on another $1 billion purchase lately.

The Calcalist report is, however, more solid than any of the above.

What is Waze?

For those who don’t know, Waze is a social traffic and navigation app that is based on a large community of tens of millions of drivers around the world sharing real-time road info and more to everyone else’s benefit.

When the Apple rumors first started surfacing back in January, Waze had around 36 million users and was on track to double that number this year.

The company is said to have roughly 45 million users today, up from 40 million back in February.

In 2012, drivers shared 90 million reports as they drove 6 billion miles (9.66 billion kilometres). Also last year, 65,000 map editors made a total of 500 million map edits and updated Waze’s map to reflect 1.7 million changes on the ground.

All this community-driven editing took place in 110 countries.

Waze has raised $67 million in venture capital to date, from investors like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Li-Ka Shing, Blue Run Ventures, Magma Venture Partners and Vertex Venture Capital.

Facebook and Waze

According to Calcalist, Facebook started talking to Waze about a potential acquisition six months ago and is now close to signing off on the deal.

Waze and Facebook are partners, having first teamed up in October 2012 when Waze launched an updated version of its mobile apps that allowed users to share their drive with their Facebook friends.

And when Facebook launched its Home launcher for the Android platform (to a slow start), it featured Waze prominently – and actually still does on the Facebook Home product website.

It’s also worth noting that, at the recent D:Dive Into Mobile conference, Waze CEO Noam Bardin name-checked Facebook Home when he was talking about the future of mobile.

Bardin was also spotted on the Facebook parking lot by Bloomberg TV reporter Jon Erlichman about a month ago. :-)

Pretty sure Waze CEO Noam Bardin just drove by in the Facebook parking lot $FB

— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) April 4, 2013

Facebook’s mobile surge

On the heels of Facebook announcing its Q1 2013 earnings, the social networking company revealed that it now boasts 751 million mobile active users, an increase of 54 percent year-over-year.

It has also reported ad revenue in the first quarter of $1.25 billion with 30 percent coming from mobile, or $375 million.

The company isn’t shy about its further ambitions when it comes to mobile, and has been making acquisitions left and right to beef up its portfolio of products, hire mobile development and user experience talent and stay ahead of the curve.

Facebook has in the past also made a couple of acquisitions in Israel, namely Face.com and Snaptu.

Buying out Waze would be a way for Facebook to further arm itself in the battle with Google for Internet dominance.

Image credit: Thinkstock

Facebook released an update today for its Page Manager iOS app. The company says that it has been rebuilt to help make managing Page content much faster and easier to use.

Facebook’s Page Manager was released last year simply to help make it easy to manage Pages on the social network. It works for those users who manage a Page for work, school, or for other organizations that have a Facebook presence — this way it prevents any accidental personal posts to Pages and avoids the dreaded social media faux pas.

Page admins who download the app will find that it now comes with several new enhancements. Particularly of note is that scrolling through the Page timeline has been improved so it has a much faster experience. Photos can also be opened quickly and closed using a single downward swipe.

Since picture is worth a thousand words, Facebook is cognizant that Page admins want to share photos pertinent to their fans, so now the photo experience has gotten better.

With this update, Facebook is bringing in the photo capabilities that came with its own Camera app (released right after the social networking company purchased Instagram). Not much has been heard about that photo app since, but it appears the technology has been incorporated into Facebook’s bespoke apps.

Previously, Page admins were only able to either take a photo or import one from their camera roll and immediately publish it to the Page. In this manner, any touch ups or application of filters would have been done through Instagram, Hipstamatic, Camera+, Kitcam or any third-party app. A very lengthy workaround.

Another update is the ability to apply stickers and emojis to messages sent through the app. Stickers only seemed logical seeing that Facebook brought them to not only its main mobile app, but also to its standalone Messenger app. Now the cycle is complete and all of the social network’s apps can go sticker crazy.

These updates are only for the iOS version of Page Manager. The Android version has not yet been updated.

➤ Facebook Page Manager for iOS

Photo credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.

Yesterday, Twitter experienced issues loading new tweets for nearly one hour and today it appears to be the turn of Facebook, as a number of users are currently unable to log into the social networking site due to an error.

Update: It appears that Facebook is working as usual again. The issues lasted for around 90 minutes.

TNW staff in North America and Asia are not having issues accessing Facebook, but other users are less fortunate. According to Web monitoring service Downrightnow.com, Facebook has experienced a ‘Likely Service Disruption’ since 18:00 PDT, 02:00 BST — that’s more an hour ago at time of writing.

Users that are affected are being greeting with the below message — via @niw — that explains that a “site issue” has made their account temporarily unavailable. The message provides no further details.

It is not clear if the issue is restricted to certain regions or is affecting users worldwide, plenty have taken to Twitter (see search) to vent their frustration:

Many users back on #facebook now!Total down time for many users for about 45 minutes.downwhere.com/facebook

— Chad Pharand (@downwhere) May 7, 2013

Looks like Facebook is down! Has been for the past 15 min or so. Anyone else having the same problem?

— gopalshenoy (@gopalshenoy) May 7, 2013

Anyone else having a problem with facebook..It keeps telling me account temporarily unavailable

— Hans Landa⚡⚡ (@TheReal_Coon) May 7, 2013

As we said yesterday in the case of Twitter, downtime is never welcome for any Internet site, particularly those that are used on a daily basis by millions. Facebook will be looking to fix whatever the problem is quickly.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for more details.

Headline image via westm / Flickr

Facebook has released an update to its Messenger iOS application. In this latest version, users will find the return of the popular delete-by-swiping feature and the addition of stickers.

Yes, folks. The stickers have now spread to Facebook’s popular Messenger app. Having been added to its main app, the social networking company felt it best to extend them to its stand-alone communication app.

As Facebook for iOS was updated last April, users saw that it included a few similar features that came with its Android launcher Facebook Home. Included in that release were chat heads, a revamped News Feed, and, of course, stickers. As is perhaps expected, once a feature is released for the base app, it’s only a matter of time before it gets released to the standalone app that does the same thing, and vice-versa.

Case in point, when Facebook Messenger received VoIP calling capabilities, a couple of weeks later, Facebook’s native app was able to do the same through its message feature. In order for people to use stickers, Facebook says that users can tap the smiley in the Messenger text box to pull up a bunch of available stickers. Tap on one to insert it into the conversation. It is also offering premium stickers too that users can purchase by tapping on a basket icon in the app.

While stickers are great, it’s important to note that it is being released slowly. Over the next few weeks, Facebook will make it available to a set of its users until everyone has it. If you’re an Android user, don’t fret because your version of Facebook Messenger already has stickers.

Another update to Facebook Messenger for iOS includes the return of the popular delete-by-swiping feature. With this option, users can delete conversations from their inbox just by swiping on the screen. This will not only surely save time to get rid of all the different conversations you no longer want, but also looks pretty cool.

➤ Facebook Messenger for iOS

Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.

Facebook debuted on the Fortune 500 list at spot number 482. Yahoo came in 12 spaces behind, at 494.

The Fortune 500 list is comprised of the 500 largest United States-based companies, ranked by revenue, not profits. For the most recent list, Facebook’s listed $5.1 billion in revenue bested Yahoo’s $5 billion by a small edge.

The top of the list is what you expect: larger petro-companies and Berkshire Hathaway, capped by Walmart. Interestingly, the most recent list is the first in which Apple crested the top ten spots, landing in sixth place, one tick above General Motors. To reach the top ten, you will need to beat Ford’s revenue figure of $134.3 billion.

It’s interesting to see how far apart the firms at the top of the list in fact are, with the top two companies – Walmart and ExxonMobil – posting revenue figures north of $400 billion; third place on the chart all but half of that range, with Chevron reporting $233.9 billion in revenue.

Facebook’s making of the list is another milestone on its transformation from disruptive startup to a more mature company that kicks out regular profits. Facebook’s passage of Yahoo is perhaps symbolic of its quick rise, and the slow drift of the company now helmed by Marissa Mayer.

You can read the full list of companies here, if you are so inclined.

In the first quarter of 2013, Facebook had revenue of $1.46 billion, and GAAP net income of $219 million.

Top Image Credit: Acid Pix

Facebook has introduced a new way for developers and marketers to target users with specific adverts based on their existing app purchases and microtransactions.

Developers speaking at Mobile DevCon 2013 in London yesterday unveiled a new targeting field buried in the latest SDK for a feature called Custom Audiences, which will result in more relevant adverts being displayed on both its website and native apps.

What does that mean for you, the user?

A retail app such as Etsy could use the feature to reach out to Facebook users with additional products and items that they might be interested in, based on their interests and order history.

Likewise, a video game developer could incentivize players with additional in-app items or microtransactions from the Facebook timeline. Facebook employees suggested that the targeting tool could also be used to target groups of people who have downloaded one game, take Angry Birds Friends, with another title from the same publisher, such as Bad Piggies.

Any talk of adverts often makes Facebook users recoil in disgust. It’s understandable, given that in an ideal world the social network would be free and also devoid of adverts.

The reality is that Facebook is a free service. If CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to keep it that way, he’s going to need to find an advertising model that is both lucrative to brands and unobtrusive for users.

The Next Web looked at Facebook’s mobile display ads earlier this year and was irritated by the number of entirely irrelevant panels devoted to online casino apps and gambling services.

Targeted tools are therefore, albeit reluctantly, the best way for Facebook to continue publishing adverts without alienating users or encouraging them to quit the service altogether.

What are Custom Audiences?

The feature announced at Mobile DevCon 2013 yesterday relies on Custom Audiences, a tool built by Facebook to help marketers find new customers among Facebook’s existing userbase.

“Using email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs or app user ID’s to make the match, you can now find the exact people you want to talk to, in custom audiences that are defined by what you already know,” a guide on the Facebook website reads.

As a result, developers can use information about offline audiences – say those who walk into a brick-and-mortar store – to target new segments of the Facebook population.

It’s a powerful tool and one that should be bolstered by the new ability to reach users who are already engaged with a Facebook-connected app.

As a user, however, it’s important to remember that you can always hit the drop-down arrow from either the desktop, mobile Web or native app versions of Facebook and hit ‘Hide’ to avoid adverts from a specific brand or publisher.

Related: If Facebook Home will track my every move and serve me targeted ads, sign me up now