Facebook Rolls Out VoIP Calling To U.S. iOS Messenger Users. Facebook originally started testing a new free (minus and data usage fees you incur from your carrier) calling feature for users of its Facebook Messenger app for iPhone in Canada early this year, and now the service is available to U.S. users as well. The free call button app now shows up in the app for U.S. users, in any conversation where both parties are using the Facebook Messenger app.
This is a pretty handy feature for users of the social network, especially since unlike with Skype, Viber or other VoIP calling apps, you already likely have a wide network of contacts you’d actually want to have live voice conversations with built-in and ready to go on Facebook. And while it isn’t entirely free on cellular connections, since it uses your data connection, it is completely free at home on Wi-Fi, which means it can likely replace a home phone for a lot of users if they’re still hanging on to one, or at least for-pay at-home VoIP services. Intel And Facebook Team To Open Source Data-Center Designs, Open Compute Project Grows With 12 New Members. With News Feed Unable To Handle All Of Our Content, Graph Search Will Lift Facebook Engagement. Many of you are probably presented with the same problem when logging into Facebook.
The first thing that you see is your News Feed, with tons of content from your friends and pages that you like. Unless you sort your News Feed by recent, which isn’t always accurate, you have no idea what to look at first. This is a problem for Facebook, because you will probably interact with less content if you’re not shown something that interests you right away. Sure, Facebook has an algorithm based on what you like and who you’re friends with, and with that, they try to show you “relevant” things.
With today’s announcement of Graph Search, Facebook ensures that users will have the chance to interact with all of the content that they missed in their News Feeds. Facebook Shares Dip Below $30 Again, As Graph Search Fails To Convince Investors. Facebook Takes On Google, But Private, Personalized, Social Search Has No Clear Winner Yet. Facebook launched Graph Search today, its own version of a private, personalized social search engine. It’s somewhat of a competitor to Google’s “Search Plus Your World” – Google’s more recent take on blending personal data with that of the greater web.
Although Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was careful to frame it as not being a web search product, that statement was not entirely accurate. It is web search, after all – it’s search and it’s on the web. It’s just not web search as we know it. Don’t be mistaken – these two companies, Google and Facebook, are now battling for your private data, and to some extent they’re both betting on personalization as the future of search. Facebook, as we know, has over 1 billion users, and today noted that it has over 240 billion photos as well, and “more than a trillion connections.” In other words, it’s home to a wealth of private data, which Google can’t know about and index.
Facebook Graph Search, the company says, is rolling out slowly. Facebook Announces Its Third Pillar “Graph Search” That Gives You Answers, Not Links Like Google. Today at Facebook’s press event, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced its latest product, called Graph Search. Two of the members of the Graph Search team, Lars Rasmussen and Tom Stocky, were very high up at Google. Facebook is calling it a “Dream Team.” Zuckerberg made it very clear that this is not web search, but completely different: What’s more interesting than any of these things (that Facebook currently does) is giving people power and tools to take any cut of the graph that they want.
Zuckerberg explained the difference between web search and Graph Search. “Web search is designed to take any open-ended query and give you links that might have answers.” Graph Search is designed to take a precise query and give you an answer, rather than links that might provide the answer.” Zuckerberg says that Graph Search is in “very early beta.”
Facebook Graph Search is completely personalized. Stocky says you can also use Graph Search for dating. Pulse Gets More Personal, Lets Users Add Their Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr & Tumblr Feeds. Pulse, the popular news-reading app for the web and mobile, just announced that it is going beyond the standard news sources it currently features and adding authenticated personal social feeds from social sites like YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr and Facebook to its app. As Pulse co-founder Akshay Kothari told me yesterday, this is Pulse’s first real foray into social feeds. While Pulse already offered some aggregated social feeds from the likes of Reddit, Instagram (top photos), YouTube (top videos), Readability (top reads) and similar sites, this is indeed the company’s first attempt to focus more on authenticated personal feeds and, at first glance, marks a bit of a change for a company that is better known for its stylish presentation of news feeds from news sources across the web.
As Kothari told me, though, the original idea for Pulse was always to give its readers one page to see all their content and remove the need for them to go to different platforms to do so. What Facebook Should Be Building. Facebook has a big launch event on Tuesday. Here are nine things I think it may be working on, or at least should be. We’ve heard tips that some of these are already in development and may be released soon, while the rest could fill big holes in Facebook. Even if none of them hit the stage on Tuesday, they probably will eventually, and the list offers a deep look at what Facebook could improve right now. What this list doesn’t include is wildly forward-thinking products. Facebook should definitely still be trying to blow people away with revolutionary innovation. But right now there are cracks in the infrastructure, business deficiencies, and huge opportunities to apply its data set that need to be taken care of.
Facebook Search — For Businesses, Posts, And People Mark Zuckerberg explained at TechCrunch Disrupt that Facebook already had a team working on search, and that it’s uniquely suited to answer questions like “What’s a good sushi restaurant in San Francisco?” Facebook For Cars. The Boy Who Cried Facebook Phone. In The Lord of the Rings, when Sauron’s forces capture Gollum, they torture him in Mordor but are only able to get two things out of him: “Shire” and “Baggins”. Over the past few days, we’ve had similar frustrations in trying to track down the content of the Facebook event taking place this coming Tuesday.
Despite hounding a number of people who might be in the know, the only discernible things we were able to come up with was: “big deal” and “mobile”. Interesting, but way too vague. But we endured. And now we have a bit more information. And that information points to a Facebook Phone …of some sort. I know, I know. And yet, all kinds of things in tech have this funny way of only being false until they’re true. And so, with that in mind, multiple sources have told us that they expect some sort of Facebook Phone to be on display on Tuesday. Now for the caveats (and they’re important). This has always been a point of contention in the Facebook Phone saga. What about the OS itself? Russian Giant Yandex Has Secretly Built A Killer Facebook Search Engine App Codenamed “Wonder”
Yandex, the Google of Russia, has built a voice-activated visual search engine for Facebook. Codenamed “Wonder,” the mobile app lets people ask what businesses friends have visited and what content they’ve consumed, sources confirm. The question is if Facebook will permit the app. Its policy prohibits use of its data in search engines without permission, and Wonder resembles Facebook “Nearby.” I talked to multiple industry sources who’ve seen Wonder first-hand or currently have a build of it on their iOS device (though an Android version may have been developed, too). The logo you see above is my attempt at an artist rendition of what sources say an early version of the app’s logo looked like. One source said Wonder is “about more than Facebook” which means it could pull in more traditional search results, or just make use of data from the partners I detail below.
A Yandex spokesperson said Yandex “can’t confirm and can’t comment” on Wonder. Welcome To Wonder Yandex’s Passport To The USA. Facebook Mobile User Counts Revealed: 192M Android, 147M iPhone, 48M iPad, 56M Messenger. Facebook keeps user counts for its mobile apps hidden, but analyst Benedict Evans found a way to uncover them and they provide critical insight into the direction and performance of Facebook’s mobile efforts. Most interestingly, Facebook’s Android user count is growing much faster than its iPhone user base, but is found on a lower percentage of Android devices. Let’s take a closer look at the data.
A year ago, Facebook stopped reporting user counts for its own mobile apps via the Graph API. But if you searched for one that none of your friends used and hovered over the search result, you could see its monthly active user count (MAU). Evans of Enders Analysis meticulously recorded until “some time in November [2012], those disappeared and were replaced” with hover cards lacking the usage data, he tells me. He incorrectly calculated Facebook’s mobile web site stats due to overlap between native app and HTML5 site users. iOS vs. This all leaves out the iPad, though. Facebook does a lot. Early Studies Show Facebook Mobile App Install Ads Perform Well For Devs, Indicating Big Revenue Potential. Chances are you may have seen one yourself, but just how well are Facebook mobile ads promoting app installs performing?
AdParlor, one of Facebook’s advertising and marketing partners, has provided us with some data to show that the answer is rather well, although the experience of another developer points to some of those good gains possibly being short-lived. The gains of a strong app install model are potentially not just good news for developers — who need more than app store rankings these days to get their apps seen, installed and used — but also investors — who need to keep seeing evidence of solid business models in Facebook’s business.
AdParlor recently ran a four-week campaign with a large global gaming company (it doesn’t say which one), with app instill ads placed in the mobile news feed. “As Facebook mobile app install ads evolve, we’ve seen very encouraging numbers across the board,” writes Hussein Fazal, CEO at AdParlor. Facebook Launches Flexible Sentences For Open Graph So Apps Can Share More Descriptive Feed Stories. A Facebook news feed story that says “Tom tracked Muse on Songkick.com” doesn’t tell you much. But with new Flexible Sentences, apps can post stories like “Tom tracked Muse to get concert alerts via Songkick.com” that attract more downloads, are less awkward, and make the Facebook news feed richer.
Facebook is also launching a tool to show developers which stories are most shared and could use rewording. The update plays into Facebook’s “one feed to rule them all” strategy. It hopes to get all types of apps sharing their activity to its news feed and Timeline. This gives it content it can show ads around, and also helps it target those ads based on what people are doing in third-party apps. For example, even if a user doesn’t like the rock band Muse, thanks to the Songkick story discussed above, Facebook knows they’re interested in the artist. In exchange for this content and ad targeting data, Facebook helps third-party apps gain exposure to new users and drive intalls.
With A Flick Of The Wrist, Facebook Could Destroy Current Advertising Models. Advertising is something that we’ve all grown accustomed to in today’s society. For companies that provide free services, it’s an important part of keeping those services free for everyone to use. But are ads even working on us anymore? That’s up for debate and discussion, and those are decisions everyone can make for themselves. One of the biggest companies ever facing the conundrum of introducing advertising is Facebook. The social network is inherently made up of people, and in turn, their content. There’s private content, personal content and public content. No matter where the advertising is placed, it’ll either rub people the wrong way, or will be ignored completely.
Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do. Is that “new” advertising the future or is it more of the same? Where Myspace failed, Facebook has a real opportunity to capitalize on the fact that ads are just not so good for the user’s experience. What’s Best For Users. Your Facebook Pokes Are Stored For Two Days, Then Their Encryption Keys Are Deleted. Facebook Poke messages self-destruct after a few seconds, but is Facebook saving these potentially embarrassing photos and videos?
No. It’s deleting them. Pokes are encrypted, and Facebook deletes the encryption keys two days after they’re read so they’re unreadable. Key backups are destroyed within 90 days, making a poke completely inaccessible. So send those silly, racy messages with confidence. Normally, Facebook stores everything you share until you delete your account. But ephemeral messages are different. Yesterday when Facebook launched its ephemeral messaging app Poke for iOS, I heard some people say they would stick with independent competitor Snapchat because they worried “Mark Zuckerberg is going to see my Pokes.” That gives users the peace of mind that they can Snapchat anything they want as long as they don’t offend the recipient. As soon as Poke launched, I was curious about how Facebook would handle this especially private data and asked for its policy.
It’s A Facebook And Google World On Apple’s App Store, Poke Hits #1 A Day After Its Release. Remember all of this excitement hoopla over Facebook’s latest standalone app, Poke, yesterday? You aren’t the only one that is interested, apparently. As The Next Web reports, Poke by Facebook has hit the No. 1 free app spot on Apple’s App Store, just a day after being released. Make no mistake about it, the big companies like Facebook and Google are going to have the best holiday season ever thanks to Apple and iOS.
It’s very rare to see utility or social apps hold the top free app spot like Google Maps has over the past week, and like Facebook Poke probably will. It’s usually a game, or a boogers app that holds that down. And they get massive downloads because of it, especially during this time of the year. What does this mean for consumers…and for Apple? When Facebook said it was focusing on mobile, it wasn’t kidding. Note that Snapchat is holding the No. 9 spot, and is clearly slipping in popularity, and Google is sitting pretty at both No. 2 (Maps) and No. 5 (YouTube). A Whisper Is A Stronger Social Signal Than A Public Shout. Josh Williams On Why Facebook Acquired His Startup Gowalla To Put A “Nearby” Lens On All Its Geo-Data.
Hands On With Facebook Nearby, A New Local Biz Discovery Feature That Challenges Yelp And Foursquare. Instagram Will Share User Data With Facebook According To Its New Privacy Policy. National Rifle Association Hides Facebook Page To Avoid Hosting Flame Wars. More Than Privacy Controls, Facebook Needs Our Trust To Keep Growing. UK Startup Loccit Sells 8,000 Facebook ‘Memory Books’ In 48hrs, Wants To Turn Your Digital Media Footprint Into Physical Stuff. Moxie Software Taps The Facebook Social Graph To Connect Brands With Customers When The Time Is Right. Zynga’s Exclusivity Deal With Facebook Is Done, But Its SVP Says Friends Aren’t Everything. Facebook Is Down, Mobile Apps Still Working For Some — Second Big Tech Outage Of The Day (Update: It’s Back) Soleio, Veteran Facebook Designer Behind The Like Button, Joins Dropbox Team. Facebook Talks App Traction: 350 Apps Have 1M+ Monthly Actives On Site; Facebook Now Integrated In 200K Mobile Applications.
Kevin Systrom: Facebook Is Still Trying To Figure Out How To Best Create Value Out Of The Instagram Acquisition. Kevin Systrom: Instagram Will Exist Independent Of Facebook For A Long Time To Come. No Facebook Account Required: Facebook Messenger For Android Allows Sign Ups With Just A Phone Number. Europe v Facebook Privacy Campaign Group Is Preparing To Sue Facebook In Ireland, Sets Up Crowdfunding Platform To Fund Court Costs. Facebook Makes A Huge Data Grab By Aggressively Promoting Photo Sync. Update: Facebook Website Experienced 20 Minutes Of Downtime, Mobile App And Website Were Still Working. Opera Maps Global Mobile Social Network Usage: Facebook Most Frequently Visited On Phones In Macau, Twitter In Paraguay. Zynga Shares Sink 12% After Renegotiated Partnership With Facebook Makes It Just A Regular Developer.
Facebook Gives New Mobile Page Ads More Color And Context To Make Every Pixel Count. PCC clears paper for using Facebook picture of assault victim | Media. Facebook Gifts Now Lets You Buy iTunes Credit For Friends And Recommend What They Should Purchase. Droidfooding: After Years Of Giving Employees iPhones, Posters At Facebook HQ Beg Them To Test Android.
Facebook proposes ditching user votes on policy changes | Technology. Surprise: Facebook Stock Up 28% In Past Month, Highest Since July. More On Party Call, The Group Calling Service Orange Is Planting In Facebook. The Facebook Mobile Plot Thickens: Orange To Offer ‘Party Call’, A Social Calling Service Starting Summer 2013. Facebook Starts Letting iOS Users Auto-Upload All Their Snapshots With Photo Sync. Facebook Has A New On-Campus Swag Shop Called “Store” (No “The”) Facebook Denies That It’s In Talks For A New Search Partnership With Yahoo (Or Anyone Else) Facebook Turns On Carrier Billing Mobile Payments In France With Orange France And Bango. Facebook Could Slow Down A Tiny Bit As It Starts Switching All Users To Secure HTTPS Connections. Facebook And Yahoo Discussing Search Partnership, Report Says.
How Mobile Can You Go? A Mobile Take On Q3 Tech Earnings. Something Someday Will Kill Facebook, But We’re Not There Yet. Radio news is tops for teenagers | Media. Facebook Shares Up 7.7 Percent In The Wake Of Biggest Lockup Expiration, Irrational Changes Are Over. Facebook stock price faces new pressure as 800m shares go on sale | Technology. Teenager arrested for posting burning poppy picture on Facebook | UK news. Chris_stokes3 : RT @YourAnonNews: #Warning:... Chris_stokes3 : #FACEBOOK. FACEBOOK. Animations by Christopher Stokes. Chrisstokes0 : Chrisstokes0: chris_stokes... Chrisstokes0 : chris_stokes3: The #Govern... Chris_stokes3 : The #Government wants to b... Chrisstokes0 : chris_stokes3: #Facebook M... Chris_stokes3 : #Facebook Monitors Your Ch... Chris_stokes3 : #FAC... Chris_stokes3 : #Facebook Can Be #Criminal... Chris_stokes3 : Add me to your #FaceBook i... Animations by Christopher Stokes. JOIN ME ON FACEBOOK. JOIN ME ON FACEBOOK. Dark @ Heart. Darkside.
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