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

Facebook and Bing are continually growing closer together, especially through the search engine’s Social Sidebar. Starting Friday, Bing users with the Social Sidebar can like and comment on Facebook posts directly on the site.

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This is a guest post by Bill Hankes, a director at Bing, Microsoft’s search engine.

The amount of data Facebook ingests every day is roughly equivalent to the total amount of Internet traffic at the height of the Internet bubble. Think about that. The amount of data back in 1998 was so immense that search technology couldn’t keep up, and a company called Google was founded to help people access this burgeoning corpus of information.

Interestingly, we face the same dilemma today with Facebook that users of the World Wide Web faced years ago. We know there’s a wealth of useful knowledge housed in social networks that we’d like to intelligently access, but the tools today are still relatively young.

The data created every day on social networks is just as important as any other content being published on the web. Maybe even more so because it’s from a source you may know or trust. Suppose your friend posted a photo using her new Olympus underwater camera on a recent scuba trip, or your foodie friend checked in on Facebook or Foursquare at the new local gastro-pub? How might that information influence your decisions or help you get something done? What are the implications for brands given the availability of social data in search?

How many times have you seen a friend post something like, “Atlanta peeps: know a good plumber?” Or “Need a restaurant reco in Seattle?” Facebook is great for getting advice from friends and family about any number of topics ranging from trip planning to shopping and more. The problem is that the information quickly gets buried in the News Feed and finding it again, or using it to help others, is no easy task.

At Bing, we think the information is invaluable and can help you take action. In fact, we think for search engines to ignore the wealth of information readily available on the social graph is tantamount to malpractice. Anything else is simply incomplete.

That’s not to suggest that the problem is an easy one to solve. On the contrary, we have been working to find the right way to integrate social into search for a few years, which was industry leading work that other search providers were not attempting. We tried a few things and learned a lot as we blazed a new trail, which we used to launch the Bing social sidebar less than a year ago. At first we provided close integration with Facebook to surface basic information your friends may have shared. Then we added data from Twitter, Foursquare, Quora, Klout, and also influential bloggers into the sidebar, which sits on the right-hand side of the search results page.

Now you can see information relevant to your Bing searches directly from your Facebook friends and other social connections: things like photos from places they’ve visited, questions and advice posted in status updates and comments, and check-ins. All of this information can help you make faster, more informed decisions – isn’t this why you turned to search to begin with?

I recently shopped for a digital camera, but I haven’t used an SLR since high school. Where did I turn for help? Search, of course. I see the usual shopping information in the search results, but I also see that my friend Alam has posted a link to a new Canon camera that he’s purchased. This is naturally helpful to me, but it is equally important to brands. Marketers for these brands should think about how they will now show up in Bing’s sidebar, and ensure that product and service information is socially sharable, just like Canon does in this example.

I’m also planning a family vacation this summer to Iceland, so I recently did a search for Reykjavik. In addition to normal results you’d expect any search engine to provide, Bing shows me that three of my friends have been to this city and have either posted photos from places they’ve visited in and around Reykjavik, or posed questions asking for advice. This is the type of information I’m actually looking for and can immediately help me in my planning, so I can now follow comments that their friends have provided in response, and join the conversation by posting my own comment directly from Bing that will also show up on Facebook. What’s interesting here, again from a brand perspective, is the possibility of linking to hotel or attraction information.

I consider this experiential information from my Facebook friends to be far more valuable than links to sites with reviews by people I don’t know. And when actionable social content is added to existing useful resources from across the web that comes up in organic search results, a much more holistic view of the information becomes available. Considering the number of friends we all have on Facebook, as well as connections on other social networks, the information they post is important and helpful to your search experience.

We are still in the early days of social search, but give it a try and let us know what you think. Just go to Bing.com and in the top right corner of the page connect your Facebook account to Bing.

Bill Hankes is a director at Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, where he focuses on social search, the company’s work on entity understanding, and cross-company efforts to integrate Bing capabilities into Windows, Xbox and other devices and services.

Contrary to an erroneous report in The Guardian last week, Facebook isn’t losing users in the U.S. They’re just changing up their habits. According to figures provided to AllFacebook by Nielsen, Facebook users are shifting more of their social network time to their mobile devices and away from desktop. In March 2013, U.S. visitors to Facebook’s mobile application (Android & iOS) spent an average of 6 hours, 49 minutes on the site, compared to 6 hours, 44 minutes on average on desktop.

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Facebook added 17 new positions to its careers page this week, including a Manager of Public Policy for Instagram and a number of openings on the user operations, finance and sales teams.

New listings added to Facebook’s careers page:

• Manager, Public Policy (Instagram) (Menlo Park)
• Financial Analyst, FP&A – HR (Menlo Park)
• International Payroll Lead (Dublin)
• Privacy Counsel (Washington)
• Data Product Manager (Menlo Park)
• IT Operations Lead (Menlo Park)
• Security Engineer (Menlo Park)
• HR Specialist (Austin)
• Data Center Facility Operations Engineering Manager (Altoona)
• Associate, Risk Ads (Hyderabad)
• Specialist, Risk Operations (Hyderabad) (Hyderabad)
• Analyst, User Operations, Site Integrity (Hyderabad)
• Team Lead, Product Operations (Menlo Park)
• Global Account Manager (Mexico City)
• Head of CPG (Sydney)
• Vertical Client Partner, Retail (London)
• Vertical Client Partner, Telco (London)

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook has hired Nicola Mendelsohn as VP, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, filling a void being temporarily filled by VP of Global Marketing Solutions Carolyn Everson after Johanna Shields left in October 2012.

Mendelsohn was most recently partner and executive chairman at Karmarama agency in London. She was formerly board director at BBH and deputy chairman at Grey London. She was also the first female president of the Institute of Practitioners of Advertising.

In notable departures news, General Counsel Ted Ullyot is leaving, according to a filing today. Ullyot has been with Facebook since 2008, during which time it faced high-profile lawsuits from the Winkelvoss twins and others who claimed ownership of the company, patent suits from Yahoo and others, several privacy-related issues and an FTC investigation over the social network’s acquisition of Instagram.

According to AllThingsD, Ullyot does not have another job lined up, and is likely taking some time off.

Facebook’s head of Android product Bubba Murarka has joined VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson as General Partner and Managing Director. He had been at Facebook since 2008, and was most recently involved in the launch of Facebook Home.

As for other hires, Facebook removed 23 positions from its careers page this week, including a Head of Global Marketing Design and a few jobs in user operations, infrastructure, corporate development and other areas.

Prior listings removed from Facebook’s careers page:

• Head of Global Marketing Design (Menlo Park)
• Marketing Manager ( Contract) (Singapore)
• Food & Beverage Manager (Dublin)
• Finance Manager – Data Center Infrastructure (Menlo Park)
• Financial Analyst, Network Infrastructure (Menlo Park)
• Fixed Assets Accountant – Systems and Controls (Menlo Park)
• Administrative Assistant – Corporate Development (Menlo Park)
• Administrative Assistant, Engineering (Menlo Park)
• Administrative Assistant, Sales Planning & Operations (Menlo Park)
• Systems Engineer, Citrix (Menlo Park)
• Commissioning and Deployment Manager (Menlo Park)
• Manager, Marketing Communications APAC (Singapore)
• Product Marketing Manager, Developer Monetization (Menlo Park)
• Data Analytics Lead, User Operations (Dublin)
• Team Lead, User Operations (Menlo Park)
• Integration Manager, Corporate Development (Menlo Park)
• Manager, Corporate Development (Menlo Park)
• Merchant Operations Analyst (Menlo Park)
• Mobile Partnerships Strategist (Menlo Park)
• Account Manager, Czech (Dublin)
• Ad Operations Specialist (Dublin)
• Client Partner – Financial Services & Travel, Global Marketing Solutions (Sydney)
• Client Partner, Politics (Washington)

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

A few weeks ago, Facebook updated the layout for pages on iOS and mobile web, bringing information such as a map and a call button to the top. Friday, Facebook will start rolling out this update for Android.

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One-half of mothers on Facebook said they would share brands’ content on the social network in exchange for rewards, while 57 percent said they would like brands’ pages, according to the results of a survey of 647 moms across the U.S. by brand loyalty and engagement platform PunchTab.

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The defending National Basketball Association champions are also this week’s champions in terms of people talking about this, as sister page PageData pegged the Miami Heat’s PTAT for the week at 345,333, dwarfing the total of the second-place club, the Los Angeles Lakers, at 210,817.

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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

Facebook App User IDs are a new feature available to iOS developers who can use them to target their users by actions they took within their app. This is already available in the Facebook SDK for iOS, but will come to the Android SDK soon.

App User IDs are a component of Custom Audiences. Previously, advertisers could create targeting groups by hashed email addresses, phone numbers or user IDs. Now, developers have a way to target ads to their app users who haven’t logged in with Facebook or registered with an email address or phone number.

For example, a shopping app can target people who made a purchase and then show them ads with other items they may be interested in. A game developer can target engaged users of one of their games with ads for another game that they make.

To do this, developers make a request to Facebook’s servers to request an ID to be generated, whether it’s for users who installed an app or made a purchase. Facebook will return encrypted IDs that can then be compiled into a list for Custom Audience targeting through Power Editor or the Ads API. Then a developer can reach the audience with any type of Facebook ad, either on desktop or mobile.

Each call to Facebook’s server to generate an app user ID will generate a different ID so that a developer can’t use the ID across apps or app instances, making it more privacy friendly. Also, in some cases where users have turned off ad tracking in iOS 6, the call will not return an app user ID. The same would happen if the person does not have the Facebook app installed or isn’t logged in.

Nanigans VP of Product Per Sandell says App User IDs could help developers improve app re-engagement.

“Facebook’s mobile channels are already delivering significantly higher ROI than other mobile channels,” he says. “Coupling that with the 5X or more ROI increase provided by Custom Audience targeting over standard interest targeting, and Facebook’s mobile advertising solution just became that much more powerful for marketers across the globe.”

 

To learn more about this topic, join us at Inside Social Apps in San Francisco June 6-7. Nanigans GM of Games John Dobrowolski will be speaking on a panel about Trends in Mobile and Social Advertising moderated by Inside Facebook Lead Writer Brittany Darwell.

When Facebook introduced Home, as well as the flagship HTC First device, it felt weird to call it a phone. There’s little to no customization, as there is with most smart phones on the market, and it seems like that’s what turned off users. But the planned updates announced Thursday show that Facebook is planning to turn Home-enabled phones back into, well, phones. However, Facebook Home could just be a guinea pig for the company to develop something better in the future.

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Facebook today announced an update for its Android homescreen experience Facebook Home to address performance and stability. Facebook also revealed at a press event at its headquarters today that in four weeks since the launch of Home on April 12, Home increased user engagement by more than 25 percent compared to the standard Facebook app.

Facebook measures engagement through two areas — feedback such as commenting and liking, and time spent in the app. Facebook director of mobile engineering Cory Ondrejka adds that Facebook Home, with its Chat Heads feature, has also increased the use of messaging. He says participation, which is how many users are actually using Messenger, saw a 7 percent lift, while the total volume of messages sent was up 10 percent.

Facebook plans to update Home on a monthly basis with the latest update arriving today, and future updates landing on June 9 and July 11.

Ondrejka revealed that Facebook Home has nearly reached the one million downloads mark. He adds that, for the amount of devices Home is compatible for, one million downloads was within Facebook’s expectations for Home in this time frame.

Facebook also addressed issues users have experienced with Home, including the lack of folder and doc support as well as a more intuitive way to initiate a discussion with Chat Heads. In a future update within in the next couple of months, users will be able to slide up as they normally would to bring up their apps — as seen to the right — but instead of a small pane with apps, it will be a full screen of apps set in a translucent background with folder support.

For Chat Heads, users will soon be able to drag their profile picture to the left, which will initiate the messenger list to drop down from the left. As for widgets support, Facebook is looking into it, but didn’t reveal any specific plans to integrate it. The upcoming launcher screen, including folder support, is visible below. “We wanted to ease the transition from your old launcher to your new launcher,” says Adam Mosseri, director of product at Facebook.

Facebook is also addressing the tutorial for Home. In a later update, when a user first installs Home, they will be greeted with a “Welcome to Facebook Home” message at the top along with a prompt to drag their Facebook profile picture up to go to the app launch. Facebook wants to hold the user’s hand more before they let them go explore Home on their own. Once the tutorial is completed, the user will be popped into Cover Feed.

“Because it’s a novel interface, we’ll gently lead the user into the experience so they can figure out how to use it,” Mosseri says.

Keep in mind that none of these new features for Home are launching today, which is just about performance. Facebook plans to roll these features out in the next couple of months.

Mosseri says Facebook hasn’t cross-promoted Facebook Home through the Facebook app for Android on purpose. Cross-promotion within an internal network is an important viral tool many mobile app and mobile game developers use to move their user base from one app to another. He adds that once Facebook feels Home is ready, the company will begin marketing Home in all of its apps.

Facebook Home is currently only available for Android, which is supported on four devices — HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

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

“Home is the first product we’ve released that’s really about ‘mobile-best’ and the transition beyond ‘mobile first’” said Facebook’s VP Cory Ondrejka. To further that, Facebook previewed some new features Home will get eventually including a “Dash Bar” buddy list for starting chats, an improved “Dock” for your favorite apps, and a better “new user experience” onboarding flow.

Later today around 3pm PST, Facebook will release its first update for Home in the form of a Google Play update to Facebook For Android (which hosts some nuts and bolts of Home). The update is predominantly performance and bug fixes, and doesn’t include these new features mentioned above. Dash Bar, Dock, and NUX will come in future monthly updates, but no specific schedule has been revealed.

As for ads in Home, VP Of Mobile Engineering Ondrejka says there’s no timetable for that yet either. “We know we’re going to do ads in Home, but there are steps we need to take before we do that so they fit into Home’s aesthetic and they’re beautiful. We’re not ready yet” said Ondrejka.

Home Makes People Use Facebook 25% More

Ondrejka gave a momentum update at the “Home Whiteboard Session” today at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park. He explained that Home is nearing 1 million downloads, and users’ favorite features are Cover Feed and Chat Heads. Those who’ve download Home spend 25% more time on Facebook as a whole. That stat alone could mean Home is a success, and has a lot of potential to benefit Facebook in mobile. Home also increases the number of daily comments and Likes someone leaves on the news feed by 25% too. Meanwhile, Ondrejka said that Chat Heads increases participation, or the raw percentage of people who use Facebook Chat, by 7%, and it increases messages sent by 10%.

However, there were a few main complaints in Home’s Google Play, which I detailed on Tuesday. Specifically, people don’t like losing the personalization they’ve already done on their phone. They don’t want to lose their widgets, app dock, and folders. Users also said it’s too difficult to start a Chat Heads conversation. Finally, some users get confused about where their old Android app launcher went. Facebook will address these with a few new features.

Future Changes To Home NUX

Facebook will add a better “NUX” or new user experience that it internally refers to as “Blue’s Clues”. When users first install Home, they’ll get a deeper walkthrough of how to use gestures to reveal their app launcher, chat, and use other features. Little blue instructional boxes pop up as you first navigate through Home. They explain what a button or gesture does, and encourage you to try them to continue through the tutorial. This should reduce confusion and frustration, and get more people to give Home a chance.

Here’s a Vine of Facebook Director Of Product Adam Moserii previewing the new onboarding experience.

Dock

A new app dock will be added to Facebook Home’s app launcher. Android users gave feedback saying they enjoyed the tray of favorite apps that always sits at the bottom of the launcher. Home got rid of that, but in future versions, Mosseri tells me users will be able to import their old dock, and possibly build one from scratch. When you swipe up to access your apps, the Dock tray will appear locked at the bottom, similar to the persistently visible Dock at the bottom of the iOS homescreen. You can the Dock in Home in the photo on the right.

Dash Bar

To make starting a conversation fast, Facebook will add a Buddy List into Home. Before, you had to swipe left to open the full Facebook Messenger app to start a new conversation. With Dash Bar, when you swipe left it will instead create a Chat Head bubble that contains an overlaid Buddy List where you can get an instant look at all your friends and see which ones are online to chat with. Then you can initiate a conversation with them, all from a screen over the top of Cover Feed rather than within the Messenger For Android app.

Respecting Your Old Phone

Facebook seems to have realized that people spend time customizing their phone experience. They don’t want to sacrifice it for Facebook Home. They want both. This previewed slate of changes will help Facebook respect the phone you already personalized. This is a shift from Facebook Home as a homescreen replacement to a homescreen layer. If Facebook can pull it off, users won’t have to choose between apps and friends. They’ll have both at their fingertips.

Retail giant Target teamed up with Facebook on the launch of Cartwheel, which debuted on beta Wednesday and is aimed at using the social network’s offers feature to drive shoppers into its stores.

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Facebook released version 2.0 of its Pages Manager app for iOS on Wednesday, making it faster and including features like photo filters and stickers from its other applications. However, it no longer includes detailed post insights such as clicks and People Talking About This, and it no longer allows page owners create offers.

Previously, page owners could get several metrics about each of their posts, but now the only per-post metric that’s available is overall reach. Tapping the number leads page owners to a screen where they can pay to promote their post. To see insights like Link clicks, engaged users or even shares, page owners now have to visit desktop.

Many page owners may see this as another way that Facebook is putting its revenue-generating Promoted Posts feature ahead of functionality for admins. For example, a recent change on desktop replaced page notifications in the admin panel with prompts to promote their posts. [Update: A Facebook spokesperson says these features will be integrated in the next version of the app.]

Another missing feature is offers. Pages Manager used to have an option to create an offer post, but that’s gone in Version 2.0. [Update: Again, Facebook says this is due back in a future release.]

A key improvement is that it’s now easier to scroll through a page’s Timeline and quickly view photos fullscreen. Facebook says it rebuilt the app for speed. It includes many of the elements from other apps, such as the photo uploading process and messaging feature. This means that page owners can now edit their photos and add filters to them, just as they can in the main Facebook app and Camera app. Page owners can also use stickers in their private messages with fans or customers, though that might not be appropriate for some businesses and organizations.

Facebook released version 2.0 of its Pages Manager for iOS application, adding features such as photo filters and stickers, but removing insights such as clicks and people talking about this, as well as other features, albeit temporarily.

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On the Google Play store, Facebook Home users have made their voices heard. As of Thursday, there are more than 8,300 one-star reviews of the application, compared with 2,700-plus five-star reviews, with Facebook Home earning an average rating of 2.2. During a media session Thursday with selected reporters, Facebook talked about how the company has taken these reviews into consideration and will give users better access to apps over the next couple of months.

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