Facebook, Twitter give mobile advertising industry a boost

New ad products from Facebook and Twitter have given US mobile advertising a boost, bringing revenues for the sector to more than $4 billion this year, a research firm said Monday.

On Instagram, a thriving bazaar taps a big market

Instagram, the picture-sharing application that Facebook bought earlier this year, has not yet figured out a way to make money. But some of its users have.

Twitter starts offering select users ability to download all their tweets

Twitter has started offering select users an ability to download all their tweets in one handy archive.

Confirmed: Twitter had agreed to buy Instagram before Facebook swooped in

Weeks before he accepted a $1 billion buyout offer from Facebook Inc, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom had verbally agreed to a $525 million offer from Twitter, according to a report in The New York Times citing unnamed sources close to Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook goes the native route with new Android app

Facebook has moved further away from HTML5 after releasing a native version of its Android app.

Facebook for Android version 2.0 has been built from scratch leveraging native Android controls, as compared to previous versions of the app which were built using HTML5.

Twitter, Facebook becoming important tools in political debate: Survey

Social media like Facebook and Twitter have become important elements in political and social discourse in a number of countries, particularly in the Arab world, a survey showed Wednesday.

Facebook removes Taliban recruitment page

Facebook has taken down a page used by the Islamist guerrillas of the Pakistani Taliban to recruit new fighters, a spokesman for the US-based social network site told AFP on Wednesday.

Facebook prompts overeating, spending: Study

Facebook may lower one's self-control and tempt him or her into excessive eating or spending, says a new consumer study.

Facebook helps FBI bust international criminal ring

Investigators led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and aided by Facebook Inc, have busted an international criminal ring that infected 11 million computers around the world and caused more than $850 million in total losses in one of the largest cyber-crime hauls in history.

Obama tweet most popular, but Olympics ruled Twitter in 2012

An election victory tweet from President Barack Obama "Four more years" with a picture of him hugging his wife was the most retweeted ever, but the U.S. election was topped by the Olympics as the most tweeted event this year.

Facebook ends democracy experiment after voters fail to show up

Facebook closed the polls Monday on letting democracy rule when it comes to policy changes.

A referendum to strip Facebook users of the power to endorse or reject policy changes through popular vote was opposed by a majority of voters, but not enough people cast ballots to make the results binding.

Facebook blames mini-outage on technical glitch

Facebook says some users were briefly unable to access the site because of a technical glitch.

Twitter introduces photo filters to take on Instagram, Facebook

Twitter on Monday introduced the ability to add colour filters to user-uploaded photos, a step that sharpened its budding rivalry with Facebook Inc.

See, what employers look for on Facebook, Twitter

Employers turn to social media sites like Facebook when deciding whether to even call a job candidate for an interview, according to a new study.

Research from a global security software company discovered that more than 90 percent of human resources professionals search for unprotected social media profiles in order to assess a candidate's suitability.

Report: Facebook in talks to buy Microsoft Atlas ad platform

Facebook Inc is in negotiations with Microsoft Corp about acquiring advertising technology that could allow the social network displays ads on other websites, broadly expanding its advertising business, according to media reports on Thursday.

Facebook is in "serious" discussions with Microsoft about a deal to purchase Atlas Solutions, an ad-serving product that Microsoft acquired through its $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive in 2007, according to reports in the technology blogs Business Insider and AllThingsDigital on Thursday.
The deal could allow Facebook to significantly expand its advertising business by showing ads on third-party websites, mounting a challenge to Google Inc's DoubleClick ad network, said the reports, which cited anonymous sources.
The potential price for the acquisition was unclear, though Business Insider said the highest bid for Atlas in Microsoft's previous attempts to sell the business was $30 million.
Facebook and Microsoft representatives declined to comment.
Facebook, the world's No. 1 online social network with roughly 1 billion users, has been moving aggressively to bolster its advertising business with new capabilities, including ads on mobile devices and features that demonstrate the effectiveness of its ads to marketers.
Facebook currently generates 86 percent of its revenue, which totaled roughly $1.3 billion in the third quarter, from ads that appear on its own website.
Shares of Facebook were off 1.2 percent, or 33 cents, at $27.38 in midday trading on Thursday. Microsoft shares were up 7 cents at $26.73.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Google brings photo-sharing app Snapseed to Android, makes iOS version free

Google said Thursday its online social network had grown to 135 million active users, and added a photo-sharing app which helps compete against services like Facebook's Instagram.

"Today Google+ is the fastest-growing network thingy ever," said Google senior vice president Vic Gundotra in a blog post.
He added that "135 million (users) are active in just the stream," and that more than 500 million have upgraded their Google accounts to potentially participate in the social network which aims to rival Facebook.
"This enthusiasm, we think, stems from our building tools that build real relationships -- in a live hangout, around a breathtaking photo, or with an inner circle of friends," Gundotra said.
"So today we're launching two new improvements that help bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software."
Google said it has now introduced the mobile photo-sharing service Snapseed, made by Nik Software, to the social network.
"We're excited to bring their Snapseed app (last year's iPad app of the year) to Android," Gundotra said. Google also reduced the price of the iOS version of Snapseed from $4.99 to free.
The service, which is similar to Instagram -- bought by Facebook for a hefty price this year -- allows users to crop and enhance pictures before posting to social networks.
Gundotra said Google+ will be adding a new feature called "Communities" which makes the Google+ "hangouts" permanent locations.
"Google+ has always been a place to crowd around common interests and meet new people. What's been missing, however, are more permanent homes for all the stuff you love: the wonderful, the weird, and yes, even the things that are waaay out there. With Google+ Communities there's now a gathering place for your passions."

Facebook replaces Infosys on Nasdaq-100 index

Facebook will become part of the Nasdaq 100 index of the largest non-financial companies listed on the electronic exchange, the market operator said Wednesday.Facebook will join the index on December 12, a statement from Nasdaq said. It will replace the IT firm Infosys, which is moving to the New York Stock Exchange.
The news could be positive for the huge social network, which made its keenly anticipated market debut in May at $38 a share, then saw the stock price slide by more than 50 percent in subsequent weeks on concerns over its business model.
Being part of the index means a number of institutional and portfolio investors will purchase the stock for funds that seek to mirror the market index.
Facebook will also be part of the Nasdaq 100 Equal Weighted Index and the Nasdaq 100 Technology Sector Index.
Shares in Facebook were down 0.24 percent in midday trade at $27.39, representing a total market value of $59.4 billion.

 

Instagram shuts off Twitter feature

Facebook Inc's recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web's dominant social media companies.Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said Wednesday his company turned off support for Twitter "cards" in order to drive Twitter users to Instagram's own website. Twitter "cards" are a feature that allows multimedia content like YouTube videos and Instagram photos to be embedded and viewed directly within a Twitter message.
The move marked the latest clash between Facebook and Twitter since April, when Facebook, the world's no. 1 social network, outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $1 billion. The acquisition closed in September for roughly $715 million, reflecting Facebook's recent stock drop.
The companies' ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.
Beginning earlier this week, Twitter's users began to complain in public messages that Instagram photos did not seem to display properly on Twitter's website.
Systrom confirmed Wednesday that his company had decided its users should view photos on Instagram's own Web pages and took steps to change its policies.
"We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives," Systrom said in a statement, citing recent improvements to Instagram's website.
"A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal Web presence," Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and "like" photos directly on Instagram's website.
The move escalates a rivalry in the fast-growing social networking sector, where the biggest players have sought to wall off access to content from rival services and to their ranks of users.
"They're both competing for slices of the same pie, the pie being users' attention," said Ray Valdes, an analyst with research firm Gartner.
If Facebook decides to offer advertising on Instagram, it's important that the users visit Instagram's own website, said Valdes. "If the eyeballs are elsewhere, you have less to work with in terms of monetization," he said.
Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram's meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social Internet supremacy.
Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter's executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, was an early investor in Instagram and had hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a successful bid.
When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he highlighted Instagram's inter-connectivity with other social networks.
"We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience," Zuckerberg wrote. "We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks."
A Twitter spokesman declined comment Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter's website confirmed that users are "experiencing issues," such as "cropped images" when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.

Facebook rolls out new messenger app

Social networking giant Facebook has rolled out its new messenger app, allowing mobile phone users without Facebook account to sign up the service with a phone number.With no Facebook account and email address required, app with the new feature will be first available to users of phones running on Google's Android platform in India, Indonesia, Australia, Venezuela and South Africa, reported Xinhua citing the company.
The sign up option using phone number will be rolled out globally and its version for users of Apple's iPhone as well as other smartphone platforms are also under way, said Facebook.
Facebook Messenger is an instant messaging service and software application which provides text and video communication.
Its mobile version was released last year for major smartphone platforms, but users need to sign up with a Facebook account.

The latest move is expected to help Facebook reach a larger audience, attracting smartphone users with no Facebook account to gradually use more Facebook services.

 

Pope gets more than half million Twitter followers

Even though he hasn't sent a single tweet yet, Pope Benedict had more than half a million Twitter followers in eight languages on Tuesday, the day after the Vatican unveiled his handle: @Pontifex.
They included people ranging from the simple Roman Catholic faithful to a Jewish head of state.
"Your holiness, welcome to Twitter. Our relations with the Vatican are at their best & can form a basis to further peace everywhere," tweeted Israeli President Shimon Peres, who at 89 is four years older than Benedict.
The Vatican said on Monday that Benedict will start tweeting on mostly spiritual topics from December 12.
The pope actually has eight linked Twitter accounts. @Pontifex, the main account, is in English. The other seven have a suffix at the end for the different language versions. For example, the German version is @Pontifex_de, and the Arabic version is @Pontifex_ar.
On Tuesday afternoon, the English version had the most followers, with nearly 400,000. The next largest was Spanish, with some 93,000. The lowest number of followers was the Arabic, with about 3,500. Benedict's native German had about 10,000.
But the pope, leader of some 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, won't be following anyone but himself, the Vatican said.
A look at his official Twitter page on Tuesday showed that he is "following" seven people but they are merely versions of his own Twitter account in different languages.
The first papal tweets will be answers to questions sent to #askpontifex.
The tweets will be going out in Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Arabic and French. Other languages will be added in the future.
The tweets will come primarily from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church holidays. They will also include reaction to major world events, such as natural disasters.
He will push the button on his first tweet himself on December 12 but in the future most of the tweets will be written by aides, and he will sign off on them.
The Vatican, whose website has been taken down by hackers in the past, said it has taken precautions to make sure the pope's certified account is not hacked. Only one computer in the Vatican's Secretariat of State will be used for the tweets.
The pope's Twitter page is designed in yellow and white - the colours of the Vatican - and his picture over the backdrop of a St Peter's Square packed with pilgrims.
The page may change during different liturgical seasons of the year and when the pope is away from the Vatican on trips.