Shift Open Marketing Cloud Adds Moontoast Social Rich Media Ad Platform
The Shift Open Marketing Cloud welcomed a new application into its suite: the Moontoast Social Rich Media Ad Platform. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Pandora Enables Automatic Sharing To Music Section On Facebook’s Revamped Timeline
Internet radio provider Pandora deepened its integration with Facebook, introducing the ability for its users to automatically publish their activity to the music section on the social network’s redesigned Timeline via Pandora.com or its applications for the iPhone and Android devices. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Why Life Without Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm Would Suck
Facebook has an algorithm (externally known as EdgeRank) that determines who sees which posts at which times. It’s meant to present users the content with which they’ll be most likely to engage. Many users hate it. Even more page administrators despise it. But can it actually help both? Yes. There’s already a site where every post (whether it’s from your best friend or a random brand) is weighted equally, and it’s called Twitter. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook gives admins new way to create ‘unpublished posts’ directly from page
Facebook is testing a new way for page owners to create “unpublished posts” — those that intentionally do not appear to all fans of their page – directly from the composer on their page. Unpublished posts do not appear on a page’s Timeline or in fans’ News Feeds, but they can be promoted with ads. This allows page owners to make posts that are tailored to a specific audience and ensure that they are only seen by that audience, not distributed to anyone who Likes the page. It also creates a way for advertisers to test different creative options for their page post ads without overwhelming their fans with multiple posts. Now page owners can make these kinds of posts directly from their page by clicking the clock icon used to schedule posts. After users select a year, a “hide from News Feed” option will appear. Checking that box will prevent the post from being distributed to fans’ feeds, though it will still appear on the page’s Timeline. Then a page could promote the post or use it as part of a page post ad in the mobile or desktop News Feed. Facebook first added the option for pages to make unpublished posts through the Pages API in July 2012, but these posts were only eligible for promotion in the right hand sidebar of the site. In March of this year, however, Facebook opened up its News Feed inventory to ads created from unpublished posts. Facebook offers some page post targeting by age, gender, location and other demographic information, there is no organic way to target posts by interests or factors like Custom Audiences. But with unpublished posts that run as page post ads in News Feed, businesses can show users more relevant content. For example, service could show longtime users one version of an ad, new users another, and leads yet another. Or an app page could make an unpublished post to promote to iPhone users and another aimed at Android users. Other brands are using unpublished posts simply to test different ad creative and optimize their campaigns.
Although this feature is hard to discover and not particularly intuitive for most page owners, it is useful to have the “hide from News Feed” option in the composer. Previously, users could only create unpublished posts via the self-serve ad tool, Power Editor or API. The image below is from the ads tool, after selecting “Promote Page Posts” and “Create New Page Post.”
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Unpublished Posts Can Now Be Created Via Facebook Page Composer
Facebook page administrators can now create unpublished posts, also known as dark posts, directly via the social network’s page composer. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Video StoryEngine Helps Brands Get ‘iNvolved’ With Videos On Facebook
Another way to promote brands through videos on Facebook and other social networks was introduced by iNvolved Media, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer: Video StoryEngine, which iNvolved described as a proprietary interactive video engagement layer that seamlessly operates across social, mobile, and premium Web content. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook platform industry news: Nimble and Crowdbabble
Nimble Social CRM company Nimble this today released a new version of its platform with more features for managing business contacts. A new “Today Screen” is an improved dashboard with a to-do list, milestones and key events among a user’s network. The “Signals Screen” gives users notifications from across their social networks, such as invitations, likes, shares and mentions. Nimble also made updates to its search feature and created a way for users to easily retrieve their last contacted connection. Nimble now connects with more than 100 other platforms so users can bring in all their contacts and audiences. Crowdbabble Toronto-based start-up Crowdbabble today announced its Real-Time Facebook Monitor, a tool for Facebook page admins to monitor their pages and keep track of competitors. Users can get real-time analytics or generate historical reports. It aims to help page owners understand when they should post and how often, along with how well their posts are performing and how they compare to others in the business.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
KidWind Challenge Oregon Gets Gust Of Support From Facebook
Facebook has chronicled its efforts to monitor water and energy usage at its data center in Prineville, Ore., and the social network recently focused its energy on wind energy, donating $15,000 toward KidWind Challenge Oregon, a contest in which students contributed designs for wind turbines. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
REPORT: Teens Still Use Facebook (And Can Master Privacy Settings)
Yes, teenagers use Facebook. And although whether or not they’ll be using Facebook in a few years remains to be seen, the site does have a considerable presence among high-school students. The Pew Research Center recently examined how teens use social media, finding that they don’t like drama and having their parents connected to them, but they stay on Facebook because it plays a key part in the social experience. However, Facebook’s youngest users tend to have no problem configuring privacy settings. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Independent Horror Movie To Be Released Via Facebook Game?
There are movies, and there are Facebook games, and there are even Facebook games based on movies. And now, thanks to Cardiff, U.K.-based filmmaker Mr Dog Films, there may be a feature horror film distributed via a Facebook game. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Resources To Help Victims Of Oklahoma Tornado
Following the devastating tornado that ravaged Moore, Okla., Monday and resulted in several deaths, a Facebook user in nearby Shawnee launched a Facebook group, May 19th 2013 OK Tornado Doc & Picture Recovery, aimed at reuniting victims with their possessions that were blown all over the state. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Likeable Media Introduces LikeableAds.com
Likeable Media, a social media marketing provider, announced the launch of LikeableAds.com and its new media and planning department to better serve clients buying advertising for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Crowdbabble Launches Facebook Real-Time Monitor
Facebook’s built-in page insights are helpful, but not if you’re looking for minute-to-minute changes. Crowdbabble wants to solve that. The company recently launched a real-time Facebook analytics monitor, so brands can see how their pages (and those of their competitors) are doing instantly. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Nimble 3.0 Allows Brands To Be More Nimble In Managing Facebook Relationships
Customer-relationship-management tool Nimble announced the release of Nimble 3.0, with updates highlighted by the Today Screen, a new homepage that allows users to more closely follow and monitor their Facebook friends and fans and contacts from other social networks, and the Signals Screen, which highlights social network interactions that should receive priority. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
STUDY: Facebook Users Who Like TV Show Pages 75 Percent More Likely To Watch
Facebook users who like the pages for television shows are 75 percent more likely to watch those shows, according to a recent study by media giant Viacom and its Viacom International Media Networks division. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Hashtags Getting Closer?
Rumors began surfacing in March that Facebook would add a Twitter staple, hashtags, and now developer Tom Waddington uncovered evidence that the social network is getting closer to incorporating the feature in the form of a mention of “hashtag” in the software-development kit for JavaScript. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Eminem Publisher Files Suit Vs. Facebook, Wieden & Kennedy Over Music In Home Ad
Did Facebook’s ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy, lose itself in the music of hip-hop star Eminem while creating “Airplane,” a commercial for Facebook’s recently introduced Home overlay for Android? 8 Mile Style, Eminem’s song publisher, filed suit in federal court in Detroit against the social network and the agency, alleging that the ad used music from the rapper’s 2000 song, “Under the Influence.” New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Go Social This Summer – One-Day Sale!
Today only, we’re having a one-day sale on our summer social media networking events, AllTwitter Marketing Conference and AllFacebook Marketing Conference, June 4 and 5 in San Francisco. You’ll save $100 off your ticket to either event or $200 off a Combo Pass to attend both. Just use the code “ONEDAY” when you register. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook code hints that hashtags could be coming to the service
References to hashtags in Facebook’s code suggest the social network could be working on bringing the feature — popular on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr — to its own platform. Developer Tom Waddington from Cut Out + Keep, who has discovered a number of unreleased Facebook features in the past, today pointed us to a mention of the word “hashtag” in Facebook’s Javascript SDK. He says this likely for an XFBML hashtag plugin, similar to the hashtag tracking widget Twitter offers developers and publishers. Waddington also noticed that Facebook.com/hashtag redirects to Facebook.com, leading us to believe the company could be saving this page for an unreleased feature, otherwise it would lead to a 404 error page. In March, anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal, AllThingsD and TechCrunch that Facebook was working to integrate hashtags into its service to help users follow trending topics, search for news and contribute to conversations around a particular issue. That same month, Facebook added a job listing for a data editor to join the consumer communications team “responsible for amplifying the many exciting ways people are using Facebook and connecting with others during global events, holidays and other significant moments in time.” Shortly after, the company added a multiple listings related to strategic partner development, such as roles focused on entertainment companies and public figures in Brazil and Asia, as well as musicians and athletes in the U.S. In April, Facebook added a listing for a Public Content Partnerships Analyst to use “quantitative analysis, data mining and the presentation of data to communicate how our partners engage with our product.” Facebook has not commented on the possibility of hashtags on the platform. Users can already include hashtags in their posts — and many do, often for stylistic reasons — but these do not generate links to more posts with the same hashtags. On other services, hashtags serve to label and group conversations. Although they are most associated with Twitter, they have roots in early Internet chat networks and have more recently taken off on Instagram, which Facebook now owns. Hashtags could give Facebook users new ways to engage with people and content outside their network of friends. The feature could also lead to better ways of searching posts. With Graph Search, Facebook removed the ability to search public conversations. Hashtag search could replace that and improve Facebook’s existing photo search by letting users tag their contents as they do on Instagram.
Another mention is in the live source code for Facebook.com. A reference to ”EntstreamHashtagOverlay” links hashtags to Facebook’s hovercard feature. This suggests users will be able to hover over a hashtag to get more information, similar to what they can do for people, apps and pages, as seen below.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Facebook releases native share dialog for iOS developers, allows Open Graph sharing without login and permissions
Facebook today announced the availability of a new native share dialog for iOS, which will give developers an easy way to incorporate Facebook sharing — including Open Graph actions — in their apps. The mobile share dialog is a standard tool that enables users to post something back to Facebook. Similar to the Like button, the share dialog can be implemented with a small amount of code across any app and it works even if users haven’t logged into the app using Facebook. The dialog includes support for location tagging, friend tagging, custom privacy settings, deep linking and more. Previously, mobile developers would have had to program their own sharing mechanism with these features or use the old “feed dialog” or iOS 6 Share Sheet, which are more limited in functionality and can require up to three extra steps for users. Unlike Share Sheet, the native share dialog supports Open Graph publishing, as seen in the “read a book” example to the right. This is important because until now, developers had to ask users to log into their app using Facebook and allow various publishing permissions, which some users did not like. Now, because the share dialog opens up the main Facebook app to complete the action, users don’t need to log into a third-party app with Facebook in order to share back via the Open Graph. As long as users have the Facebook app and are logged into that, they can easily publish to Facebook from any iOS app that uses the share dialog. This could greatly increase the amount of structured sharing through Open Graph verbs and objects. Facebook first announced the native share dialog, along with other new mobile platform features, in April. However, it was only available in limited beta for iOS until today’s wide release. It is still in development for Android. The company says the share dialog should be used by default in all mobile apps that want to enable users to share something to the social network, even if the apps don’t have deeper Facebook integration, such as login or Open Graph. [Update: Cut Out + Keep's Tom Waddington pointed us to a mention in Facebook's Javascript SDK that suggests a similar share dialog with Open Graph support could be coming soon for the web.] Facebook offers a detailed comparison of all of a developer’s options for sharing back to Facebook — including the new share dialog, iOS Share Sheet, web-based feed dialog and Graph API – here. Technical documentation on the native share dialog is available here.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Facebook debuts Share Dialog for iOS out of beta, lets developers add sharing to apps with one line of code
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
Read more [The Next Web - Facebook-tagged]
Facebook now lets users suggest photos for place pages
As part of the social network’s continuing efforts to build out its location database, Facebook now allows users to upload and suggest photos for unadministered place pages. Facebook’s location platform relies heavily on user-generated content and community editing. Anyone can create a place or edit the details of an existing place, such as the category, business hours, website or other information. Some place pages are run by the people or organizations that own them, and in those cases, they can designate their own profile picture. This new feature applies to places that don’t have an admin. Unadministered places are ones that are not managed by a person, business or organization, and are often cities, public parks or local businesses that haven’t claimed their page on Facebook. They do not appear in Timeline format like claimed places do. These rely on Facebook users and a community of power users called “Places Editors” to be filled out with complete information and photos. Previously, users could suggest the place’s official website and then select one image from the site to serve as the profile picture of that place. Earlier this month, Facebook began rolling out a new way for users to add any photo to serve as the profile picture. Users can now upload a new photo or choose from one of their existing albums. Other users can vote on the submitted photos, and the most popular one becomes the profile picture. The other images become part of an album for the place. However, with the option for user-generated photos comes an increase in spam, which Places Editors are working to remove. For example, in the image below, someone has uploaded a screenshot from a social game for an island in Florida. Other people are adding photos of themselves or memes. Business owners should be aware of how their locations might be presented on Facebook and take steps to claim their page and merge any duplicates. Thanks to Emile Dingemans for the tip.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Guest Post: Campaigns Don’t Always Need To Be Integrated To Be Successful
This is a guest post by Mario Zelaya, Managing Director at Majestic Media, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer & digital marketing agency, specializing in custom apps and promotions for web and mobile. Marketers are starting to focus more on social media efforts, realizing that it’s an important piece of the marketing puzzle. They’ve started to use social media, but only as an extension of a traditional campaign or as a small marketing initiative on the side. Many of them are hesitant to rely too heavily on social media. They’re willing to let social media ride in the car, but they’re reluctant to give them the keys. According to a report released by Social Media Examiner at the end of 2012, 83 percent of marketers have said that social media was important to their business. However, the CMO survey released in February found that marketers are only allocating 8.4% of their budget for social media. Many believe that in order for a campaign to succeed, it always needs to be integrated across different channels. This is simply not the case. At Majestic Media, we’ve seen time and time again that a fully digital campaign, or even a fully social campaign, can reach hundreds of thousands of consumers, achieving millions of social impressions and engagement, and generate a tremendous amount of traffic. The campaign was launched organically on Facebook, posting on Maple Leaf’s Facebook Page for current fans to see. Within 12 hours, we had reached 3,458 pledges. Following the launch, Maple Leaf Foods started a small paid campaign on Facebook consisting of Promoted Posts and Sponsored Stories. Within a week, we saw nearly 19,000 pledges and #NeverWasteBacon was the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter in Canada. Facebook was the primary focus, but Twitter and Instagram also played a large part in the success of the #NeverWasteBacon campaign (which is still running). Maple Leaf was able to gain a huge amount of traffic without incorporating traditional mediums like radio, TV, or print. They were able to generate such a large amount of organic traffic because they took the time to build an audience. They spent time interacting with their followers and provided them with engaging, relevant content. Social media has the power to drive a major campaign, but only if you do it right. This might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised by how many brands blame a failed Facebook campaign on the social network, rather than the fact that they didn’t take the time to prepare. Social campaigns can be wildly successful if you have the right strategy in place, give people the incentive and the encouragement to share with friends and spend the time listening and building up your audience to ensure what you launch is inline with what they want to engage with. Campaigns don’t always need to be fully integrated and rely heavily on paid media to be wildly successful. Mario Zelaya is the founder and managing director of Majestic Media, Canada’s first Facebook Marketing & Technology agency. His extensive experience on the Facebook Platform includes building out social strategy, campaign ideation, app architecture, and social design for brand clients such Volkswagen, Kia, General Motors, Mazda, Gatorade, Hot Wheels, Infiniti, Nissan, Visa and many others. Majestic Media has executed over 200 large-scale campaigns and works with big brands and agencies in helping them to get results and ROI through campaigns that are social by design. Follow Majestic Media & Mario on Twitter @majesticmedia @zelaya.
Majestic Media recently launched a social campaign for Maple Leaf Foods, promoting their new product, Bacon Portions. It was a simple Facebook Application that allowed users to pledge to “Never Waste Bacon” and enter for the chance to win a year supply of bacon. Yes, bacon. Not a brand new car, $25,000 or an extravagant trip, simply bacon.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Dish Anywhere Adds Tighter Facebook Integration
Satellite-TV provider Dish Network introduced a revamped Dish Anywhere mobile application, including stronger ties to Facebook and Twitter. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Oakland Raiders Touch Down At Facebook HQ
Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., was recently invaded by Raiders — not corporate raiders, or outlaws seeking to occupy the social network, but Oakland Raiders. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Releases Share Dialog For IOS Apps
Facebook Monday announced the rollout of its native share dialog for iOS, allowing developers to enable sharing from their applications by simply adding one line of code. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Users Can Now Upload, Suggest Photos For Unclaimed Pages
Facebook is now allowing users to upload and suggest photos to be used as profile pictures for pages that have not been claimed by page administrators, sister blog Inside Facebook reported. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Which Brands’ Facebook Apps Are Tops In MAUs?
The Ad Makeover application from Dove blows away the competition among apps from brands on Facebook in terms of monthly active users, far outdistancing the second-place app, Windows 8 from Microsoft, according to a new report on brand apps from social benchmarking platform Unmetric. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
INFOGRAPHIC: Before Posting Facebook Photos, Ask Yourselves, ‘Should I Upload It?’
It seems that for every one of the roughly 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook each day, users can find corresponding words of advice on how to manage their photos on the social network. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Gifting Platform Boomerang Hits 1 Million Gift Milestone
Boomerang, which allows users to give gifts to their Facebook friends, announced Monday that 1 million gifts have been claimed on the platform. Three-quarters of the gifts were distributed through Boomerang’s brand offerings, which are free, nominal-value gift cards from major and small brands. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Expion Unleashes Suite Of New Social Marketing Tools
Social media software company Expion released a suite of new tools Monday, expanding its users’ ability to control their messages across Facebook and other social networks. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Sharing made simple for iOS apps
Today we’re making sharing from your iOS apps easy. With the native Share Dialog, you can significantly improve people’s sharing experiences from your mobile app. Similar to the Like button, you can create engaging sharing experiences with just one line of code. The Share Dialog is coming out of beta today and is ready for use in your apps through the Facebook SDK for iOS. The Share Dialog offers a lightweight and consistent way to enable sharing from your apps. People now have the option to share activity from apps through this dialog without needing to login to Facebook first. This eliminates 1 – 3 extra steps required for login when sharing via the feed dialog. The Share Dialog further improves upon the iOS 6 share sheet by adding support for publishing Open Graph actions to make it easier for people to tell their stories on mobile. In addition, people can now tag friends and share where they are enabling them to share in a more meaningful and engaging way, while helping even more people connect with your app. If you’re a mobile developer, this should be one of the first ways you integrate your app with Facebook to engage with our 750+ million mobile users. Learn more about getting started with the Share Dialog. Download the SDK now.
Read more [Facebook developer blog]
REPORT: Facebook Testing Video-Sharing Feature
In January, Facebook prevented Twitter-owned video-sharing application Vine from accessing its find friends application-programming interface. Now, according to one report, the social network may be testing a video-sharing feature of its own. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
People Aren’t Stealing Your Facebook Photos: A Lesson In Privacy
A new rumor has been sweeping Facebook — that people are stealing photos of users’ children and posting them to a page called “Infancy.” The status that I saw — which had been shared 600 times back then and more than 3,500 times at the time of writing — claimed that “loads of local kids” were shown, including the author’s own, and demanded the removal of the page. But here’s the deal: The page was automatically generated by Facebook, like this one about rock climbing or this one about food. In fact, above the photographs, it even said, “photos of my friends and infancy.” New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
7 Tips On Protecting Your Password, From Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan
Coinciding with National Cyber Security Awareness Week in Australia this week, Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan published a note on the Facebook Security page urging users to take steps to protect their passwords for the social network, and offering seven tips on how to do so. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
David Ebersman, Jas Athwal, David Fischer Exercise Facebook Restricted Stock Units
Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman, Chief Accounting Officer Jas Athwal, and Chief Marketing Officer David Fischer each outlined their transactions last week involving restricted stock units in separate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, with Fischer also reporting the sale of 24,000 class-A Facebook shares, and Athwal doing so for 125 shares. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Former Google Exec Turns Whistleblower On Company's Tax Avoidance Machinations In The UK
Google is under fire in the UK for its tax practices in the country, and a new key witness (who spoke to The Sunday Times) might put them in deeper hot water when he hands over a reported 100,000 emails and documents to the British Revenue & Customs (HRMC) services. Barney Jones, a former Googler who was at the company between 2004 and 2006, says he has material proof that Google’s London sales staff which would negotiate and close sales for the UK market, despite claiming its Dublin HQ handled finalizing all deals. Jones was prompted to speak out by testimony given to the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) last week by Google VP Matt Brittin, who said that London-based Google staff were never closing any ad sales deals, though some selling efforts were made there. Brittin had previously gone on record in November 2012 with statements asserting that no one in the London office was doing any kind of ad selling. The matter of where the deals were finalized is especially important because if a sale closes in London, it’s likely they’d be taxable in Britain, rather than in the extremely low tax-rated Ireland. Jones told the Sunday Times that Google is fully aware of this, yet there are still records of Google staff closing major deals from companies like eBay and Lloyds TSB, but Google doesn’t seem at all certain that any of the documentation will absolutely prove that it has done anything strictly against UK tax law, according to a statement provided by Google Direct of External Relations Peter Barron to the Sunday Times. “As we said in front of the public accounts committee, it is difficult to respond fully to documents we have not seen,” the statement reads. “These questions relate to Google’s business in the UK going back a decade or more. None of the allegations put to us change the fact that Google pays the corporate tax due on its UK activities and complies fully with UK law.” Google reiterated this statement to TechCrunch when we contacted them for comment. Ireland uses its lower corporate taxation rate, which is 12.5 percent, or a little over half of Britain’s 23 percent, to attract big names who base their European corporate headquarters there, including Apple and Facebook in addition to Google. The search giant is currently under fire from UK parliament members for its tax practices, thanks to a Reuters investigation that revealed statements it made last November to the PAC about its London operations may not have been entirely accurate. Amazon is next in the PAC’s sights for its UK tax practices, as Reuters has also recently uncovered evidence to suggest that it, too, is doing a lot of selling through an autonomous London-based unit, despite routing its sales on paper through a tax-exempt affiliate based in Luxembourg. In fact, for most on Google’s footing, avoiding taxes seems to be the exception, not the rule, and a recent piece by V3′s Madeline Bennett explains that even if this fresh round of hearings reveals that these schemes do run afoul of UK tax regulations, it’s unlikely we’ll see situations change all that dramatically. Governments are too dependent on the general economic benefits of hosting big corporations, and get too much out of awarding them contracts, she says, to risk doing long-term harm to those arrangements. Still, what Jones claims to have would be incredibly embarrassing for Google, especially if it spells out in no uncertain terms that closing deals was regularly handled by Google’s London staff, in direct contradiction to what Brittin has told the committee, but until we see the goods, there’s no telling how deep down the rabbit hole his information actually goes.
Read more [TechCrunch - Facebook-tagged]
Facebook roundup: IPO anniversary, Glassdoor ratings, HTC First, more
Facebook shares down 31 percent since IPO 1 year ago – Facebook shares closed today at $26.25, up $0.12 from yesterday but down 31 percent since the company’s initial public offering on May 18, 2012. Despite a new focus on monetization, particularly on mobile, Facebook hasn’t instilled confidence in investors in its first year as a public company. Many of its recent products, such as Gifts, Graph Search and Home, have launched to mixed reviews. And with all still in limited release, none has emerged as a clear source of future revenue. Still, Facebook has gone from having no ads on mobile to having mobile account for about 30 percent of all advertising revenue in the first quarter of this year. HTC slashes ‘Facebook phone’ price to $0.99, may discontinue product – HTC has cut the price of the First — the phone it launched with Facebook Home preloaded — from $99 to $0.99. According to BGR sources, HTC will actually be discontinuing the line soon, likely after in-store display contracts expire. The price cut is meant to move as much inventory as possible before being returned to HTC. The Facebook Home software, however, will still be available for select Android devices through Google Play. Facebook launches site for academic publications – Facebook this week launched “Research Publications at Facebook,” a site for research papers published by the social network’s employees. The site is open to the public and includes a number of papers on engineering and sociology topics, such as “Self-censorship on Facebook” and “Storage and Performance Optimization of Long Tail Key Access in a Social Network“
Facebook’s company and CEO rating up since IPO – Facebook has earned a 4.7 out of 5 rating on Glassdoor, a social jobs and careers community where employees can anonymously share information and reviews about their companies. That average is a slight increase from its 4.6 rating during the 12 months prior to its IPO. Approval of CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also up. He received a 99 percent approval rating among employees, a four percentage point increase from his 95 percent approval rating during the 12 months before the IPO. Facebook saw a small decline in its senior management rating, but still holds a 4.0 (very satisfied) rating over the past 12 months, compared to the 4.3 rating it held pre-IPO. In the last year, the average base salary for Facebook software engineers increased to $119,262, up from $112,193 the previous 12-month period.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Facebook brings new Offers format to Android
Facebook today announced that its new version of Offers with larger images and calls to action are now available on Android. In February, the social network began testing the new layout on desktop with an option to shop immediately or get a reminder before the promotion ends. The interface also lets users decide if and when to share the offer with friends. We started seeing this on iOS in early April, and the company officially announced it a few weeks later. Now, the product is uniform across desktop and mobile, including Android. Overall, the new design is likely to increase conversions on Offers posts because of the cleaner design and more prominent buttons to “Get offer” or “Shop now.” The “Remind Me” button available for some retailers working with Facebook directly allows companies to prompt users to redeem their offer at a later date through a notification on Facebook. An additional benefit is the My Offers section accessible from a bookmark in the sidebar menu. This feature lets users access all of the offers they’ve claimed. To learn more about this topic, join us at Inside Social Apps in San Francisco June 6-7. Inside Facebook Lead Writer Brittany Darwell will moderate a “Trends in Social and Mobile Advertising” panel in which advertisers will discuss the types of ads that fare best on which platforms and what we can expect in the future.
The new Offers also provide users with a better experience since they can now claim an offer without publicizing it to friends. After users select “Get Offer” or “Remind me,” they will have an option to “Tell Friends.” Their activity won’t be shared unless they click this button. Previously, whenever a user clicked “Get Offer,” it generated a story in friends’ feeds and in the recent activity section of their Timeline.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Facebook notifies page owners of engaging posts, tries other tactics to encourage Promoted Posts
As Facebook looks to convert more page owners into advertisers, it is trying even more new ways to highlight its Promoted Posts product. Some users are now receiving notifications when one of their page posts performs better than average. The notification encourages page owners to advertise the post to get “even better results.” Whether or not they take the recommendation, page owners might appreciate the notice about how well their post is doing. This is similar to another recent test of a homepage module that identifies a well-performing post and links to a page where users could buy additional reach through Promoted Posts. This new test uses Facebook notifications instead. Another test some users are seeing lately is an additional button to promote their posts. The button in the top right corner of an existing post next to the “highlight” and “edit” options features a megaphone icon, which Facebook uses to denote advertising. The story also includes a “boost post” button in the bottom right corner. Other page owners are seeing different language, including “promote” “get more reach” or “advertise post” instead of “boost post.” Promoted Posts are page posts that get additional paid reach in News Feed among fans and friends of fans as a result of using a button on the page. Part of their appeal is that they don’t require page owners to create campaigns through the more complex ads create tool or Power Editor. However, as Facebook gets more aggressive in pushing these paid features, some page owners might be turned off. First screenshot from Jay Baer via Social Marketers, a private industry group for social marketing professionals.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Facebook’s stock has lost 31% of its value since it went public one year ago
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.
Read more [The Next Web - Facebook-tagged]
Facebook's Growth Since IPO In 12 Big Numbers
$FB is still stuck at $26.25, way down from its $38 IPO price, but it’s made important progress since going public a year ago. Daily users up 26%, mobile monthly users up 56%, and revenue up 38% are some highlights. It’s running out of people to sign up in the developed world, but with this growth and no serious competitor in sight, it’s survived its hardest year yet. [Stats and images provided by Facebook] Likes and sharing are growing faster than Facebook’s user count, indicating strong engagement. This contradicts rumors that people are tuning out of Facebook. Zuckerberg’s Law, the CEO’s Moore’s Law-style theory, states that people will share twice as much every year. Facebook almost made good on Mark’s claim. It’s important that Facebook keeps that number growing as it’s shared content that keeps people visiting Facebook and seeing its ads. To do that, Facebook is working on the more immersive mobile experience Home which has increased time spent on Facebook by 25% for its small number of active users. More time spent could lead to more sharing. This year it doubled the speed of its massively popular iOS and Android by switching them from HTML5 to native architecture, which lead to longer session times. It added content-specific news feed to boost browsing, and launched Graph Search to pull additional value out its data and get people to contribute more. It’s also been beefing up its mobile SDKs for iOS and Android to make it easier for apps to share content to Facebook. That’s a big reason Facebook cares about helping its developers grow — they’re scratching each other’s backs. Facebook is still signing up people pretty quickly, but all users are not created equal. While it earned $3.50 per user in the U.S. and Canada in Q1 2013, it only made $0.50 per user in much of the developing world including India and Brazil. Those emerging markets are where Facebook is getting most of its growth, meaning each subsequent 100 million users added is worth less than the last. Growth in mobile has a similar issue. Facebook can show as many as seven ads per page on desktop whereas it has to be more careful not to overwhelm the small screen on mobile. So as Facebook’s users shift their access medium to mobile, it may earn less on each of them. Facebook is hoping that getting developers to pay for mobile news feed ads to get their apps discovered could counteract this, and that market is poised to grow as more businesses launch apps and the developing world switches to smartphones. Overall, though, Facebook is still growing strong nine years after launch. The network effect of its ubiquity should not be underestimated. Dislodging Facebook as the premier general purpose social network will require something that’s not just better, but much, much better. Competitors might pick away at certain use cases, but are unlikely to replace it as the core identity provider for the web. Considering Facebook’s willingness to buy out threats like Instagram (which is still growing quickly in the first world), could stave off disruption and let it reign for years to come. There’s no doubt about it. Going public made Facebook focus more on making money. It went from nearly zero revenue on mobile to $375 million a quarter, or about 30% of its total ad revenue. That in large part came thanks to the mobile app install ads it launched late last year. These let developers promote their apps in the Facebook news feed with ads that link straight to download pages in the Apple App Store and Google Play. These stores are getting more and more clogged with apps, inspiring developers to pay Facebook to get found. Facebook also made big headway with Facebook Exchange, its retargeted ads that use people’s browser histories to show them highly relevant ads. FBX is absorbing advertiser budgets set aside for retargeting. Less successful has been Facebook Gifts, its entrance into direct e-commerce. Gifts has failed to produce meaningful revenue and may need to be overhauled to get more users purchasing real-life presents for their friends. Growth in payments revenue has been relatively slow too, as more game developers move from Facebook’s web canvas where it earns 30% to mobile, where Apple and Google get that cut. One opportunity that should excite investors is that Facebook started showing ads in Graph Search. While they use the standard Facebook targeting now, they’re expected to incorporate keyword targeting, which could make them a more direct competitor to Google’s wildly lucrative AdWords business. The increasing technological savvy of local businesses could be a boon to Facebook in the future. Right now few of them actively buy social ads, but expect revenue to shift towards Facebook and away from less targeted print and telephone book ads in the future. Still, Facebook isn’t trying to make as much money as it could. Another year went by without TV commercial-style auto-play video ads (though they’re rumored to be getting closer to this), and it even paused its experiment with a mobile ad network. If Facebook built out these streams it might piss some people off or make them feel like they data is being exploited, but it could definitely produce a huge boost in revenue. Off-site and off-app ad networks could let Facebook leverage its enormous wealth of personal data to power ads elsewhere so it can earn money without showing more ads on its own properties. That potential more than any is an argument for why Facebook is undervalued. Most importantly of all, Facebook’s efforts to earn more money have not significantly impeded its mission of connecting the world. There are definitely more ads on Facebook, especially on mobile, but the data shows that they’re not annoying users enough to reduce their engagement. Facebook has grown up. It’s no longer the red-hot startup that could double its user count every year. And it’s not the mature corporation churning out amazing profits by squeezing every last dime out of its data and usage. But Facebook has weathered the storm of going public without letting it destroy its regard for the user experience. It’s now a fundamental utility for most of the world. If it can keep from getting too greedy and stay focused on the long-term health of its community, it will have plenty of time to figure out how to turn the world’s life story into serious business.
Read more [TechCrunch - Facebook-tagged]
Facebook Launches Offers For Android
Facebook announced Friday that it is making offers available to Android users. In April, Facebook made mobile offers available to iOS users. Facebook pointed out that these offers posts will have a simplified layout with larger images and clear call-to-action buttons (get offer/shop now). Facebook also said users will have more control over whether or not they want to share offer page posts. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Appeals Decision Saying Likes Aren’t Protected By Free Speech
Facebook is appealing a ruling made last year over a dispute regarding a Facebook like as free and protected speech. After a Virginia sheriff’s office employee liked the Facebook page of his boss’ political opponent, resulting in a post on the News Feed, the man lost his job. Daniel Ray Carter, along with five other people fired from the Hampton, Va., sheriff’s department, then filed a lawsuit claiming that likes on Facebook are free speech. A judge dismissed Carter’s claims in April 2012, but Facebook is keeping the fight alive. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Social Media Jobs: Trent & Company, Costume SuperCenter, Play Games24x7
This week, Trent & Co. is hiring a social media community manager, while Costume SuperCenter needs a social media/Internet marketing analyst. Play Games24x7 is seeking a marketing lead for its social casino group, and Kandu is on the hunt for a blog editor. Get the scoop on these openings below, and find additional social media jobs on Mediabistro. Find more great social media jobs on our job board. Looking to hire? Tap into our network of talented AllFacebook pros and post a risk-free job listing. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
STUDY: Digital, TV Ads Drive Viewers To Brands’ Facebook Pages
Digital ads and television ads are the most effective in driving viewers to interact with brands’ presences on Facebook and other social networks, according to the results of a recent survey of 2,577 U.S. online adults aged 18 or older by Burst Media. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook careers: public policy, event planning, creative solutions, ad ops, more
Facebook added 29 new positions to its careers page this week, including a number of openings on the user operations, public policy and global marketing teams. Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Facebook hires and departures: Japan, DC, legal, global marketing, measurement, more
Facebook has hired Atsushi Iwashita as its Managing Director in Japan, according to AsiaJin. Iwashita was most recently CEO of brand consultancy firm Interbrand Japan and previously served as CMO of McDonald’s Japan. Facebook has been growing quickly in the region, recently surpassing local competitor Mixi. Earlier this week Mixi replaced its founding CEO with 30-year-old Yusuke Asakura. Catlin O’Neill, chief of staff to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, will join Facebook’s lobbying efforts in Washington, The Hill reports. She will join Greg Maurer, a former aide to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Chris Herndon, a former Republican House and Senate aide, on Facebook’s House lobbying team. O’Neill had worked for Pelosi since 2002. Facebook Director of Communications Larry Yu this week announced that he would be leaving the company to work with friends on building The Pramana Collective, a new communications consultancy for startups. Yu had been with Facebook since August 2008. Facebook also removed 28 positions from its careers page this week, likely after making hires in the areas of user operations, account management, global marketing, measurement and others. The company appears to have hired commercial and patent counsel, heads of agency and CPG relationships in Sydney, and a public content partnerships analyst, among others. Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Could Facebook Beat Yahoo And Purchase Tumblr?
Myriad reports have said that Facebook has a problem with teen users eschewing the site for social networks such as Tumblr. A few sources have reported Friday that Yahoo may be trying to purchase Tumblr, but Facebook could also be in these discussions, as well. According to AllThingsD, Yahoo is rumored to be willing to pay up to $1 billion to purchase Tumblr, but Forbes and GigaOM think that Facebook could swoop in and add the blogging site. However, it’s unlikely that Facebook will get the chance. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
5 Facebook Consumer Interaction Drivers From Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud is famous for making society’s understanding of the conscious mind versus the unconscious mind popular. The conscious mind is associated primarily with our current moment of perceptions and awareness, while the unconscious mind largely motivates the actions in our lives — even if these motivational drivers are only available to us in a disguised form. If you compare the mind to an iceberg, as Freud often did, the unconscious is the large mass unexposed below water level. Humans: We are complex beings, aren’t we? Now let’s fast-forward about 100 years: How do we use Freud’s principles to create extremely successful and engaging social and mobile marketing solutions? New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
A Look At Facebook In The Year Since Its IPO
On May 18, 2012, Facebook became a publicly traded company. Facebook’s stock has had some definite peaks and valleys since then. The value of the company has yet to reach its opening mark of $38 per share, settling in the $26-$28 neighborhood. MarketWatch compiled a timeline of Facebook’s year after the initial public offering. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
5 Changes That Would Greatly Improve Facebook
Many of Facebook’s more than 1 billion monthly active users would agree — the site is great, but could use some improvement. As users complain about ads, a cluttered and confusing interface, and several other things, there are a few things that Facebook could implement to make the site much more palatable. Here are five innovations (some possible, some rather imaginative) that we think would improve Facebook. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook App Puts Users’ Faces On Cover Of Resident Evil Revelations
The box art for Capcom’s upcoming game offering, Resident Evil Revelations, features one of the main characters, Jill Valentine, fearfully looking through a porthole. Now, by using new Facebook application Face on Board, the game’s Facebook fans can swap places with Valentine. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Rupert Murdoch: ‘Look Out, Facebook’
News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch used Twitter to tweak Facebook on the eve of the first anniversary of its initial public offering, comparing Facebook to ill-fated social network MySpace. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Research Publications At Facebook Page Launches
Facebook launched a new page, Research Publications at Facebook, which serves as a portal for scientific papers by Facebook staffers and other researchers. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
PageData NBA PTAT: Miami Heat Soar, Los Angeles Lakers Plunge, New Orleans Pelicans Surprise
Two of the National Basketball Association’s marquee franchises are moving in starkly different directions when it comes to movement in people talking about this on Facebook for the past week, according to sister page PageData, as the defending champions, the Miami Heat, nearly doubled the PTAT gain of its nearest competitor, while the Los Angeles Lakers, after barely qualifying for the playoffs and being swept out of the first round, lost more than double the PTAT of the next team on the list. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Watchtower: Pandemic Labs’ Homegrown Take On Facebook Analytics
Social media agency Pandemic Labs created its own take on Facebook analytics from scratch, resulting in Watchtower, a comprehensive tool that allows page administrators to analyze their pages, as well as those of their competitors. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook hires new head in Japan, just days after rival Mixi brought in a 30-year old CEO
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
Read more [The Next Web - Facebook-tagged]
Facebook platform industry news: Triggit, Moontoast, Mass Relevance, awe.sm
Triggit Facebook Exchange retargeting partner Triggit today announced that it has secured $6 million in additional funding led by North Atlantic Capital along with existing investors Spark Capital and Foundry Group. Triggit says it will put the investment toward engineering and other talent as it focuses on improving products for advertisers retargeting users on the social network, particularly as Facebook evolves the exchange to include News Feed inventory. Moontoast Mass Relevance Social curation and engagement platform Mass Relevance today announced that it has integrated more than 25 billion pieces of content into dynamic visualizations on digital displays ranging from TV and second screens through billboards, stadium displays, websites, mobile apps, conference centers and in-store displays. Mass Relevance is the first Certified Twitter partner licensed to re-syndicate Twitter content for display. It can also aggregate, filter and display posts from Facebook. In the past year, Mass Relevance has powered social experiences for the the 2012 elections with CNN and Facebook; the Olympic Games with NBC and Twitter; as well as campaigns for brands like Pepsi and Doritos. awe.sm
Rich media advertising platform Moontoast today announced a partnership with user-generated video platform VideoGenie to give advertisers a new type of video ad unit within the Facebook News Feed. Brands will be able to post a call for user-generated video through their page, and directly from that post in News Feed, users will be able to record and submit their videos.
Social performance tracking platform awe.sm today announced a new CEO: Fred McIntyre, who has held senior leadership roles at AOL, Last.fm and CBS, and most recently has served as an advisor to Univision, SoundHound and other media companies and startups. awe.sm measures the business results of social marketing, such as signups and purchase. awe.sm co-founder and founding CEO Jonathan Strauss will now be Head of Product Development.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
How An Ex-Googler Built Facebook For Glass
Google and Facebook working together? They’re actually friends, in no small part thanks to Erick Tseng. The former Android leader, now Facebook’s mobile product manager, today launched the official Facebook For Google Glass app. Here he tells me about how a tiny team designed the app around simple photo sharing and Facebook’s strengthening relationship with Google. Josh Constine, TechCrunch: What was it like getting Facebook involved in the Glass program? Erick Tseng, mobile product manager for special projects at Facebook: It was great. I used to work at Google [as the lead product manager on Android until 2010]. We’re very close, but I have a personal relationship with a bunch of folks on the Glass team. It came out of a pretty informal chat with folks on that team. We both quickly came to the conclusion that it would be pretty awesome to get Facebook on Google Glass. It all developed in just a few months. Two engineers built the whole app. There were no formal designers. Just me project-managing it. We got early access to some developer hardware and Google Glass prototypes. We had a very small team build a prototype [of our app]. We liked what we saw, showed it to Google, they liked what they saw, then we productized it. It was fun to work on a new platform like Google Glass. TechCrunch: What was it like working on a fast-moving development platform like Google Glass? How do you think about what features to include in Facebook For Glass? Tseng: From a developer perspective, our starting principle was the user experience. What functionality makes the most sense when you have a device like Glass sitting in front of you? What we came up with was the idea that we wanted to do things very simply and easily. You don’t want a lot of text. We started playing with it and saw photos as a very powerful user interaction with Glass. It’s natural that when you take photos on Glass, you want to share them with the people you care about. We wanted to make the photo uploading process as quick and easy as possible, so we focused on that use case. As we were playing with Glass, we were really impressed with voice functionality, so we added in the ability to speak a photo description that gets added to your photo. TechCrunch: There’s a lot of other functionality you could have added. Did you run into constraints on the Glass platform? Tseng: To be fair, it wasn’t all that much of a constrained platform, considering we wanted to do photo sharing. Photo-taking on Glass is very fast. It’s just one click to share, and one more to decide who to share with. It’s going to be an evolving platform and we’re excited to see what Google has for developers. My expectation is that over time a lot of the user functionality will get easier. TechCrunch: What was it like working on a moving target, where you might not know what the device your app eventually launches on would be able to do? Tseng: It was fun! When you have an opportunity to jump in on an emerging category like this you jump in with eyes wide open, knowing there will be some dynamics before things start settling in. We went in fully aware that this is very early and still in development, but the opportunity to build on Google Glass was quite thrilling. We always like to think of massive scale and how we can increase happiness in our users live. With Glass, even though it’s very early, it does feel like the natural evolution of where computing is going. As it evolves from the desktop to phones to computers we wear all over our bodies, it behooves us to start only on any technology like this so we get an early glimpse of what users want. TechCrunch: There’s no way to read the feed or get notifications on Facebook For Glass right now. Did you consider the balance between building an immersive experience and one that might interrupt and overwhelm people? Tseng: I think it really comes down to how a device like Glass will continue to evolve in our daily lives and the role it will play. We wanted to keep it simple, but it was a no-brainer that photos are a very enjoyable use case. Starting with that was a very straight-forward decision. We’re excited to see Google’s feedback and get people to tell us what they think, what they wish the device could do in addition to photo uploading and we’ll take that into consideration. TechCrunch: What’s it like being at Facebook and working with Google? Is there any of the animosity people think there is? Tseng: We love working with the Google Glass team. From the very first conversation I had with the team when we said “Wouldn’t it be great if we did this?” to launch was just a couple months. That’s a testament to both teams working very closely together to get this shipped. More broadly, it’s often forgotten that we have a great relationship. Facebook is one of most popular Android apps today. We already work very closely on that experience as well. And then Home is the latest manifestation of that relationship. TechCrunch: What about your previous arguments about data portability and who can import whose email contacts or social graph? Tseng: Data importation? With the Glass team that never came up at all, so I haven’t even thought about that in this context. TechCrunch: Is wearable computing the future of social networking? Tseng: No, I think social networking is a broader concept. It permeates everything we do in our lives. Wearable computing is a way of helping you connect more closely and see context about what’s around you, but I think it’s a misnomer to say it represents the future of social networking. TechCrunch: Are there specific Google Glass features you’d like to see? Tseng: Oh yeah! I’d like to keep some of those secret for now. We want to surprise folks when they come out. This app is really our first foray into anything like a Glass form factor. We expect to learn a lot.
Read more [TechCrunch - Facebook-tagged]
Facebook builds photo sharing app for Google Glass
Google today announced a number of new partners, including Facebook, with apps for its wearable computing device Google Glass. Facebook developed its own app Facebook for Glass, which will allow users to post photos from Google Glass to their Facebook Timeline and friends’ News Feeds. Users can share photos they’ve just taken or upload past photos. To include a caption, users can speak their description aloud. The app includes options to share with the public, friends only or privately with the “only me” setting. For now, the app enables photo sharing but not other types of status updates or posts. If Google Glass eventually comes into wide use, Facebook is likely to develop other ways for people to share, browse content or connect with friends through the device. The social network aims to let people access Facebook from any platform, whether it’s web, mobile, smart TVs or emerging categories like wearable computers. Generally, though, it focuses its own development on the top platforms like web, Android and iOS, whereas apps for less popular platforms like Windows Phone and Blackberry are done by those companies themselves. “We look forward to exploring Facebook experiences across new types of mobile devices; this is only a first step,” Facebook Mobile Product Manager Erick Tseng wrote in a post on Facebook. More information about Facebook for Glass is available from the social network’s Help Center. Other partners with apps for Glass announced today are Twitter, Tumblr, Path, Evernote, CNN, New York Times and Elle.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Instagram turns on ‘Photos of You’ section for everyone, here’s how to control the pictures you’re tagged in
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: 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
Read more [The Next Web - Facebook-tagged]
Social Integration Platform Mass Relevance Announces Major Milestones
Mass Relevance, a social integration platform that worked with Facebook and CNN on Election Insights, announced Thursday that it has integrated 25 billion pieces of content into visualizations on TV, billboards, stadium displays, websites, mobile applications, and more. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Examining How Married Women Change (Or Keep) Their Last Names On Facebook
Facebook recently wondered if younger married women were more apt to keep or change their last names after marriage (at least on Facebook). The company’s data science team found that women in their 20s were the most likely to keep their maiden names, while women in their 30s and 40s hyphenated their last names more often than others. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Marqeta provides technology behind the Facebook Card, announces $14M in funding
Commerce and payments platform Marqeta today announced that it is the company providing the technology behind the Facebook Card, a gift card that can hold balances for a number of retailers or restaurants simultaneously. Marqeta had agreed with Facebook not to disclose this until now. The announcement came as part of news about Marqeta’s latest round of funding: a $14 million Series B from Greylock IL, Granite Ventures, Commerce Ventures and a number of new angel and strategic investors. The company’s +M Platform connects online and offline commerce through prepaid loyalty programs, similar to the Starbucks Card. It also allows prepaid amounts from multiple merchants, which is what Facebook is taking advantage of for its card. Facebook Card is a resusable gift card that can be loaded with balances for different businesses when a user’s friends buy them gifts through the social network. In general, Gifts have been slow to take off, in part because of confusion about what Gifts are. Some users, remembering Facebook’s virtual gift shop from a few years ago, don’t realize the new Gifts are actual physical and digital goods. Others are skeptical because they think Gifts are a third-party app, not something from Facebook. Still others might not be using the product because they feel Facebook is not personal enough to send friends and loved ones presents through, or they’re concerned about providing their credit card information to the social network. Until Facebook can better address users’ concerns and convey the benefits of Gifts — users don’t need to know a friend’s address, they can share the Gift on a friend’s wall or keep it private, payment information is secure — the product is unlikely to come into widespread use. If it can position it as a convenient but intimate way to show someone they care, then Gifts and Facebook Card might start to fulfill their potential as new stream of revenue for the company and shape commerce like Marqeta and Facebook seem to intend.
When Facebook Card launched in January, Target, Jamba Juice, Olive Garden and Sephora were the only partners, making it not very compelling. It has since added Walgreens, Burger King, Outback Steakhouse and Staples — still quite limited and user awareness still seems to be very low. We haven’t seen Facebook make any efforts to advertise this offering, though it has been promoting Gifts overall across the platform.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Introducing Facebook For Google Glass
While there have been two unofficial Facebook applications for Google Glass, Google announced Thursday at its I/O conference that an official Facebook app is coming to the high-tech specs. It will allow Google Glass owners to instantly share photos to their Facebook accounts. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Pushes Online Safety For LGBT Community
Facebook continues to look out for its users who are part of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community, using a post on its Facebook Safety page to promote “What LGBT Communities Should Know About Online Safety,” a tip sheet from the LGBT Technology Partnership, Stop Think Connect, and the National Cyber Security Alliance. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Designers On Building News Feed: ‘We Can Make This Better For People’
To build the redesigned News Feed, Facebook designers quarantined themselves into a plush living room-style office with a live feed of users testing out the new product. They didn’t really have a set plan, other than making the user experience simpler and better. Two designers recently spoke with Taxi, a site celebrating design, about the experience of creating the new Facebook News Feed. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
MediaBrix Powers Frontline Plus In-Game Campaign On King.com Facebook Game Pet Rescue Saga
Facebook users hoping to keep their accounts flea-free will be heartened by the news that flea- and tick-control product Frontline Plus launched a cross-platform advertising campaign on King.com Facebook game Pet Rescue Saga, with social and mobile game advertising platform MediaBrix providing the technology behind the campaign. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
INFOGRAPHIC: Facebook Shortcuts
Who doesn’t love a good shortcut, especially when it comes to Facebook and other social networks? Social analytics firm Quintly compiled a list of shortcuts for Facebook — as well as Twitter, YouTube, and Google Plus — in the infographic below. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Marqeta, Payments Platform Behind Facebook Card, Closes $14M Funding Round
The payment platform behind the Facebook Card, plastic gift cards that hold all electronic gift cards users have received through the social network, introduced in January, received a different type of payment, as Marqeta Thursday announced the closing of $14 million in series-B funding. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook, Open Compute Project Set Hardware Hackathon June 18
Facebook and the Open Compute Project will hold a hardware hackathon at the social network’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Tuesday, June 18, at noon PT, with the winners receiving up to $10,000 in seed funding and mentoring to groom their idea for pitching to venture capitalists. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
The Daily Beast Temporarily Banned From Facebook Due To Painting Featuring Bea Arthur’s Breasts
With more than 350 million photos per day being added to Facebook, the social network’s huge work load of content moderation will inevitably result in a few mistakes being made, but Bea Arthur’s breasts likely are not high on the list of potential reasons for discipline. Yet that’s exactly what happened to The Daily Beast. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Faces Class-Action Suit Over Text Messages
An Illinois woman is leading a class-action suit against Facebook, claiming that she received an unsolicited text message from the social network in February, and her lawyers are actively seeking more plaintiffs who had similar experiences. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Hertz Adds Facebook’s Carolyn Everson To Board
Facebook Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions Carolyn Everson is no stranger to the auto industry, having a hand in the social network’s efforts to bring back General Motors as an advertiser. Everson will now turn her attention to the rental side of the industry after being elected to the board of Hertz Global Holdings. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Moontoast, VideoGenie Team Up To Bring Brand Advocates’ User-Generated Videos To Facebook
It’s not quite the Facebook video ads that have been the subject of rumors, but social rich media advertising platform Moontoast and user-generated-video platform VideoGenie announced Thursday that they have teamed up to integrate VideoGenie’s capabilities for capturing and managing user-generated video with Moontoast’s ad units. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook lets users rate any place and change their ratings from desktop pages
Facebook place pages now include an option for users to give star ratings to businesses and locations directly from their page on Facebook.com, even if they haven’t been to the location. Facebook tells us this is a test. Previously, users could rate places from the Local Search section of the mobile app, and only if they had previously checked into the location or been tagged there. Facebook would also use the desktop sidebar to randomly prompt users to rate places they had been. There wasn’t a way for users to rate any place at any time they wanted until this past few weeks. This enables users to go back and rate the places they might not have checked into on Facebook, but it also opens the door to rating manipulation. For instance, a business could ask friends or incentivize fans to give them five-star ratings. This became a problem at one point with app ratings. Facebook eliminated app reviews and ratings when manipulation made them no longer useful, but it later brought them back with more ways to keep them legitimate, such as random sampling. Facebook says it will continue to track engagement on place ratings to find ways to improve them over time. This lates test on desktop place pages also gives users an easy way to change their rating. Before, the only way we could find to change a place rating was to do so through the activity log, but it could be difficult to find the rating among all of a user’s other actions. Changing a rating is not possible to do from the mobile app. Although Facebook has had a “recommend this place” feature since 2011, it has only recently begun to emphasize ways for users to share more feedback about the locations and businesses they visit. The social network is also developing the same for content, with users now able to rate books, movies and TV shows as of this week. All of this is building Facebook’s potential as a local search and entertainment discovery platform, and has implications for the businesses and organizations that manage their presence there. More user generated reviews and ratings gives page owners a bit less control over what is displayed on their page and the sentiments revealed there. These ratings could also begin to influence Graph Search and News Feed distribution, introducing another factor for marketers to consider and optimize for.
We also noticed that unadministrated pages now include a way for users to rate and recommend the place. Unadministrated places are often cities, public parks or local businesses that haven’t claimed their page on Facebook.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Facebook Adds Star Rating Recommendations To Desktop Pages
Recommendations are a huge part of Graph Search. When users seek restaurants or bookstores their friends have liked, Facebook shows the average amount of stars their friends have assigned when rating those places. Previously, star ratings were available only through mobile and through random sidebar polling, but Inside Facebook noticed that Facebook recently added the ability to visit pages from desktop and rate them. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Vin Diesel, Sanaa Lathan, Emma Watson and others among this week’s top PTAT gainers for actor and director pages
Vin Diesel leads this week’s list of top gainers in the People Talking About This metric for actor/director pages. The “Fast and Furious” star has achieved 1.6 million total engagements with his page, increasing by 546k engagements over the last week. With the newest “Fast and the Furious” release date nearing, the page is producing a steady stream of content. This list of top gaining actor/director pages is compiled with PageData, which tracks page growth and engagement across Facebook. Last week, “Fast and Furious” lead all movie pages in PTAT. The summer blockbuster and its star have generated a large buzz via social media. However, the most engaged post on the actor’s page was a cover photo update and not clearly associated to the film. With over 41 million total Likes, Vin Diesel’s fan page has ample organic reach which contributes to large PTAT. The second fastest growing actor page this week belongs to Sanaa Lathan, best known for “Love and Basketball.” The actress takes a personal approach to her profile page, using the first person and sharing pictures taken by herself. Her most engaging post for the week took place on Mother’s Day where she shared a photo with her mother. These types of holiday themed posts can provide increased engagement due to increased relevance to the audience. Visit PageData to see more about the top talked about actor and director pages as well as other categories. Now only $19.95 a month.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Facebook platform industry news: Compass Labs, Optimal, Viralheat
Compass Labs Social marketing platform Compass Labs today announced a new dynamic campaign solution, The Social Advertising Optimizer, which automatically manages an advertiser’s bids. The tool can identify and optimize campaigns by ad placement, targeting and creative combinations based on different weighted actions and goals. Compass Labs says The Social Advertising Optimizer has helped clients achieve a 17 percent decrease in conversion costs. It is available as a standalone product or integrated in Compass Lab’s main platform, the CLIQ Ads Manager. Optimal Social advertising and analytics company Optimal, Inc. has launched Optimal Analytics, an audience analytics dashboard for demographic and engagement statistics, as well as competitive analysis across sources like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. The tool looks at historical engagement data for top brands and daily interactions among millions of demographic and interest-based segments to give marketers key insights about their competitors and target audience. Marketers can get daily or weekly emails about the most engaging content from competitors or visit the tool directly to generate new consumer insights or build lookalike audiences for ad targeting. Viralheat Social marketing suite Viralheat today released a mobile app version of its platform, including the Viralheat stream and publishing tools. The app lets users manage multiple Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts from their iPhones. They can schedule posts, monitor conversations, respond and check analytics.
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Platform Updates: Operation Developer Love
Since last Wednesday's update, we explained how to Create Beautiful Sections for Your App on Timeline including best practices for creating them and tracking user engagement using App insights. The following stats are for activity between 05/08/2013-05/15/2013:
Bugs fixed
Activity on facebook.stackoverflow.com
Read more [Facebook developer blog]
INFOGRAPHIC: Average Facebook Page Performance For April 2013
Wondering if your Facebook page is doing OK? Quintly recently released its report on average Facebook page performance in April. The infographic breaks page performance down in terms of size, so page administrators are not comparing pages for mom-and-pop stores with those with 3 million fans. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Child Safety Groups Take Aim At Instagram
Facebook-owned photo-sharing network Instagram is under fire from advocates for children’s safety, with more than 4,500 signatures having been collected on a petition on Change.org that calls for Instagram to make the default settings private for users aged 13 through 17, and not geotag- and geolocation-enabled. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
PageData: New York Yankees Gaining The Most MLB Likes This Week
While most baseball fans either love or hate the New York Yankees, the team is growing in Facebook popularity. Already the most-liked baseball team on Facebook, the Yankees have added the most likes this past week of any Major League Baseball team, and by a wide margin. The team that has gained the second-most likes this week is the Los Angeles Dodgers, followed by the Boston Red Sox, and the Atlanta Braves. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Testing Bottom Menu On IOS App?
Facebook appears to be testing a menu that appears across the bottom of its iOS application, offering users one-click access to their News Feeds, messages, notifications, and a “more” menu. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Compass Labs’ Social Advertising Optimizer Aims To Boost Facebook ROI
Compass Labs, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer in ads and insights, announced Wednesday the launch of its newest product — The Social Advertising Optimizer — which will help marketers gain return on investment from Facebook marketing campaigns. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
STUDY: Shipping Issues Plague Flash Sales On Facebook
Ecommerce sites that run flash sales on Facebook must still deal with offline logistical issues, such as shipping, which accounted for 49 percent of negative comments in a study of 2,776 conversations on the social networks between customers and flash-sale sites conducted by fulfillment and logistics solutions provider Dotcom Distribution. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Marketing Platform Viralheat Launches IPhone App
Viralheat, a Facebook marketing platform, announced Wednesday a way that users can manage their Facebook pages on the go, with an iPhone application. From the app, Viralheat users can access the Viralheat stream, engage with Facebook fans, and publish updates. Page managers can also analyze data for their connected Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
ThroughGlass Brings More Facebook Functionality To Google Glass
Google Glass is not even available to the public yet, and there are already two Facebook applications for the head-mounted device, with photo-sharing app Glass to Facebook now joined by the much more thorough ThroughGlass. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Facebook Tests ‘Post’ Button On Top Bar
Facebook wants users to be able to post to the News Feed from anywhere on the site, even when they are already on the News Feed. Some users are seeing a post button on the top of the site. Facebook was testing a similar button in March. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Yapyzal Allows Facebook Users To Make Purchases Directly Via Offers Without Leaving Site
Another social commerce tool that allows Facebook users to complete purchases without leaving the Facebook platform debuted this week with ePaymentAmerica’s launch of Yapyzal, which allows retailers to design, post, and share offers on Facebook and complete transactions via secure processing of credit-card and debit-card information. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Optimal Analytics Allows Brands On Facebook To Analyze Performance Vs. Competitors
Self-service ad-buying and analytics platform Optimal announced the launch of audience analytics dashboard Optimal Analytics, which allows brands to examine audience demographic and behavioral statistics and track competitive brand activity across social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Caitlin O’Neill, Chief Of Staff For Nancy Pelosi, Joins Facebook’s Office In Washington, D.C.
Facebook added to its lobbying roster in Washington, D.C., with the addition of Caitlin O’Neill, chief of staff for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), The Washington Post’s In the Loop blog reported. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Three Men Arrested For Promising Pre-IPO Facebook Shares To Lure Investors
Three men were arrested at their homes Tuesday and charged with bilking an investor, dangling special access to Facebook shares prior to the social network’s initial public offering as bait. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Meet Buck: Facebook’s secret weapon for building Android apps
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
Read more [The Next Web - Facebook-tagged]
Facebook adds option for star ratings on content in Timeline sections and apps
Facebook today completed its global rollout of the new Timeline design with sections for music, movies, books, fitness and more. Now, it will begin letting users rate content from those sections or from third-party apps. Facebook says users have added nearly 200 million items to their sections daily. Since Timeline sections launched in March, more than 17 billion songs have been added to people’s music sections through Likes and listening activity from apps. With the option for star ratings on books, movies and TV shows, users will have even more ways to engage with content and add to Facebook’s burgeoning entertainment platform. The data could improve Graph Search results, News Feed relevancy, ad targeting and other components of Facebook, while allowing third-party apps to be even more personalized and offer users better recommendations. Developers can also build in features to allow users to rate content through their apps using the “rate” action, which was recently added to Open Graph.
A user’s ratings will appear in their Timeline sections under the items they’ve rated, as well as in News Feed stories. So far, it doesn’t seem ratings will be aggregated and displayed elsewhere, such as on a film’s fan page. Restaurant and other place ratings currently only appear in the Local Search section of the mobile app. App ratings appear in the App Center and when users hover over the app’s name from within News Feed. We can imagine Facebook will eventually incorporate ratings for places and content into more areas of the site when it has a greater number of ratings. For now, though, page owners don’t seem to get any information about how many people added their content to Timeline sections or what they’re average rating is. On the other hand, Facebook is giving developers more insights about user engagement with sections. App Insights will include analytics on Timeline section impressions and referral clicks to an app. Developers can create a custom section for their app, but it must be reviewed by Facebook and users have to opt in before it can be displayed on their Timeline. Related: Q&A with Facebook Manager, Strategic Partnerships Ime Archibong
Read more [Inside Facebook]
Facebook Now Lets You Rate Movies, TV, And Books To Turn Graph Search Into A GoodReads For Everything
For the first time, Facebook users can now give star ratings to movies, TV shows, and books. That data could help Facebook show more relevant content and results in news feed and Graph Search. The feature comes alongside Facebook’s announcement that it’s finished rolling out “Sections” that show what apps you use. Sections let people express themselves and gives developers a new way to grow. Facebook first started testing the new Sections in mid-March as part of a redesigned Timeline with all user posts in the right column. Now all users have the cleaner looking Timeline with posts and Sections divided rather than mixed up. Down the left column, each content type and app gets its own Section, which you can configure in your profile’s About tab. The Music Section displays what musicians you Like, the Spotify Section shows off what songs you’ve been listening to, and the OpenTable Section features restaurants you’ve favorited or recently ate at. Right now Facebook is trying to get more of your opinions codified in its graph, and Sections with ratings are a big step in the right direction. As I wrote, Sections and now ratings could be a data goldmine for Facebook’s Graph Search, as they encourage people to forge connections with apps and media they care about. Graph Search relies on those connections to generate and sort search results for queries like “Movies my friends Like”. Facebook would know to show your friends’ five-star rated movies above lower rated flicks they’ve Liked. For developers of content consumption apps like Spotify, Hulu, GoodReads and more, Sections will offer another way to grow beyond posts to the news feed. Considering people add 200 million items to Sections each day and it only just reached all users, the growth opportunity could be signficant. Facebook now has an Insights dashboard specifically for showing developers how much traffic they’re getting from sections. Facebook says “more than 17 billion songs have been added to people’s music sections through Likes and listening activity from apps.” Now Rdio and Spotify can track how those sections are netting them new users. If Sections catch on and people properly curate them, scrolling through a friend’s sections could be a great way to discover new art and apps. Meanwhile Facebook gets to chow down on the data you volunteer. Give Game Of Thrones a five-star review? Facebook will know to show you more of its Page’s updates in your news feed than a show you Like but only give three or four stars to. Add RunKeeper to your visible app sections and Facebook will probably show you more runs posted by friends. The fact is that the apps we use and the media we consume are becoming an important way we express ourselves. Facebook wants Timeline to tell you life story, and that story would be incomplete without this data.
Read more [TechCrunch - Facebook-tagged]
Facebook completes one-column Timeline rollout, says users now adding 200m items daily to the new sections
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: 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
Read more [The Next Web - Facebook-tagged]
Facebook Strategic Partnerships Manager Ime Archibong Talks News Feed, Timeline Redesigns
Over the past few months, Facebook has undergone a serious face-lift, with Timeline and News Feed becoming much more visually appealing. How did it all happen, and what was the reasoning behind it? Facebook Strategic Partnerships Manager Ime Archibong recently spoke with sister site Inside Facebook about the changes the site has seen recently, and what it means for developers. New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Read more [All Facebook]
Update Your Facebook Status And Comment Using Google Glass And Your Voice With ThroughGlass
We recently wrote about an app for Google Glass that lets you share photos to Facebook, but another one has come out that has a way more interesting feature, the ability to create status messages or comment on on the social network with the sound of your voice. ThroughGlass gives you more opportunities to interact, rather than simply share. You can post a status update, then see all of the comments and likes that come in. If you want, you can even reply to the interactions you’re getting using the same voice commands. The app was built by Drew Baumann and Andrew Skotzko, and they’re calling it the best Facebook app for Glass…until Facebook releases one of its own: Just launched the best Facebook app ever** w/ @askotzko for Google Glass. throughglass.io **Until FB +1’s me— I’ve found that voice commands, for Glass or on any mobile device, are only useful for utility purposes, such as asking for directions or providing a search. However, for the first time, I’ve found that sharing a quick thought using the device might be useful. ThroughGlass is closer to something that Facebook would build itself. Once you install the app and turn sharing on for it, it gives you the option to “pin it,” which tosses it under all of the pre-installed Cards that Google provides you with. That way, you have instant access to the app, whenever you want to share a status update or photo: Tap status update, and then you’ll get the dialogue to start speaking your mind: Once you share your update, it will show up on Facebook like any other update would, allowing people to comment and like it: As people start interacting, you’ll be alerted on Glass and then given the opportunity to reply, which is what makes this app really useful: This is an example of the incremental improvements that we can expect for Glass apps, as developers start exploring the Mirror API. For example, this is the first time that I’ve seen an app utilize the “pin” functionality, something that is akin to adding apps to a dock. As we wait for official apps from Facebook and Twitter, developers are trying to bring the future to Glass wearers now.
Drew Baumann (@DrewBaumann) May 14, 2013
Read more [TechCrunch - Facebook-tagged]
