In a Facebook "whiteboard" session today at the company's headquarters, it introduced press and analysts to its recently acquired mobile app development platform Parse and its former CEO Ilya Sukhar (who heads the Parse unit of Facebook). Sukhar seems like he could be Mark Zuckerburg's first cousin. For those who've never heard of Parse, it was a two-year-old startup acquired in April by Facebook. It's now part of the suite of tools Facebook offers for developers (Facebook Platform). Parse's mission was/is to take the complexity out of developing native mobile apps for multiple platforms (i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Facebook | Facebook: Acquisitions | Facebook: Apps & App Center | Facebook: Business Issues | Facebook: Mobile | Mobile Marketing

Feeling confused about Facebook ads? Just understanding one type, Page Post Ads, might seem overwhelming. But the infographic below from the people at Ampush takes you through the type of Page Post ads that can be done, from photos posts, video posts, link posts and text posts -- plus "unpublished posts" that let you target specific audiences. It also covers how Page Post Ads differ from Sponsored Stories: Want the infographic for yourself? You'll find it here: Facebook Page Post Ads Guide for News Feed [Infographic]. Also see the related stories below from us about Facebook ads for more [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Advertising | Infographics | Social Media Marketing

All advertisers on Facebook aim to turn users into customers. At the end of the day, marketing is about generating sales and making money, of course. But when you run ads on Facebook, it can be difficult to see to the end of the funnel. Often, advertisers get lost in the quantity of metrics and data available on Facebook and forget that their efforts shouldn’t stop there. Recently, Facebook has been actively adding offerings to make the platform more viable for Direct Response (DR) campaigns. This effort is a clear result of the increased sophistication of clients running Facebook ads. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column

Last September, Facebook opened up their Ad Exchange platform (also known as FBX) to the masses. During the launch, 16 partners were selected to develop retargeting ad platforms, one of which was re-targeting giant AdRoll. Today, AdRoll, an FBX Qualified Company, is announcing the first self-service re-targeting platform, directly for the Facebook News Feed. Just two months ago, Facebook conjoined the FBX platform with the most prominent real estate that Facebook offers, the News Feed. With the combination of a more organic message (by showing in the news feed) and the retargeting abili [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising

In the new Pew Internet & American Life Project teens and social media report, Facebook is shown to be by far the dominant social network -- in some ways surprisingly so. I say surprising because the Pew data seem to be partly contradicted by anecdotal evidence that many teens are ignoring or abandoning the network in favor of other social sites such as Instagram (also owned by Facebook), Snapchat and even Twitter. (My general write-up of the Pew study's findings is here: Pew: 94% Of Teenagers Use Facebook, Have 425 Facebook Friends.) The first chart below shows the percentages [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Business Issues | Facebook: Statistics | Features & Analysis

Teenagers use Facebook by far more than any other social media site and have over 400 friends on it. But Twitter and Instagram have massively increased their usage in the past year, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, together with Harvard's Berkman Center. The new report covers US teens and social media. There are an enormous number of findings in the document, which was compiled using both surveys and focus groups. You can read or download the full report online. Facebook Tops, Twitter & Instagram Growing According to the report, 95 percent [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Privacy | Facebook: Statistics | Features & Analysis | MySpace | Top News | Tumblr | Twitter | Twitter: Business Issues | Twitter: Statistics

Apple is once again listed as the most valuable brand on earth, while Google inched closer to the top spot and Microsoft fell out of the top five in the 2013 Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands. This is the eighth year that Brandz has compiled its list, which comes from research involving two million consumers and more than 10,000 brands, the company says. Apple tops the list again this year, with Google moving up from third place to second. Microsoft was ranked fifth last year, but fell to seventh this time around. IBM, at No. 3, is the fourth technology company in the top 10. [...]

Related Topics: Amazon | Apple | Branding | Channel: Industry | eBay | Facebook | Google | Microsoft | Samsung | Top News | Yahoo

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of Facebook's public offering. It has arguably been the most volatile and momentous period in the company's roughly eight-and-a-half year history. Facebook went public in May of last year at $38 and closed Friday at just over $26. The low, last September, was $17.55. The volatility of the stock and the fact that it hasn't fully returned to its offering price may give many institutional investors reason to complain; but, most other statistics and metrics are up from a year ago. For example, Facebook has impressively been able to grow its mobile reven [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Business Issues | Facebook: Home | Facebook: Mobile | Facebook: Statistics | Featured | Features & Analysis | Top News

Facebook attorneys told a federal appeals court Thursday that "likes" deserve free-speech protection, and anything less would "would result in chilling the very valued means for communication the Internet has made possible." As Bloomberg reports, the argument is part of a case in which an employee from the Hampton, Virginia sheriff's department says he was fired after "liking" a Facebook Page that belonged to his bosses' election opponent. That employee, Danny Carter, was one of six sheriff's employees fired after the election, Bloomberg says. The six sued their boss, claiming the firin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Facebook | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: Legal

In an effort to get more app developers on board using sections, the Facebook Developer blog released a list of best practices for creating customized sections and added section timeline analytics to their App Insight tool. After replacing aggregations with app sections last month, Facebook has rolled-out sections to everyone, and according to the blog post, "...are seeing almost 200 million items added daily." With sections, users can rate movie, TV show and book content directly on their timeline, as well as include ratings from apps. By highlighting a number of apps already using section [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Apps & App Center | Facebook: Insights | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: User Interface | Social Media Marketing

Google has just added apps from Facebook, Twitter, CNN and others for the Google Glass device and showed a preview of them to a packed house in the "Developing for Glass" session at Google I/O. Several new apps are now available for Android users via the MyGlass app that serves as the Glass' headquarters: Facebook Twitter Tumblr Evernote CNN Elle magazine Google's Timothy Jordan showed off a few of them during today's session. Based on the screenshots in his presentation, some of these apps/experiences are further along than others. Facebook On Glass It sounds for now lik [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Facebook | Facebook: Mobile | Featured | Google | Google: Glass | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Mobile

In a sign of the strength of Facebook's retargeting ad network, Facebook Exchange (FBX) partner Triggit has secured $6 million in additional funding, led by North Atlantic Capital. FBX, which only officially launched last September, allows advertisers to target ads to site visitors when they are on Facebook. Triggit will use the funds to invest in engineering and staff to support Facebook's news feed retargeting capabilities that debuted in March and other new product developments. Triggit now claims to be the leading FBX retargeter with a reach of 1.1 billion monthly Facebook unique use [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook: Advertising

Word-of-mouth marketing at scale has been one of the Internet's greatest -- and most elusive -- allures for brands. Through a new partnership announced today, social rich media platform Moontoast and user-generated video platform VideoGenie are aiming to make it easier for brands to achieve that scale through Facebook. In a first, marketers will be able to feature and promote user-generated video testimonials and stories from brand advocates within native ad units in users' Facebook newsfeeds. VideoGenie's video platform enables easy user-generated video creation and sharing, while Moont [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Top News | Video

The folks from sketch comedy group Extremely Decent  have personified the frustration many users have felt upon seeing yet another update to the Facebook UI. Ready for your friends and friends-of-friends to have access to your music and photos? Want to find out about all the events you've been invited to? Take the tour! Here it is: A Facebook Update In Real Life [youtube]http://youtu.be/JvQcabZ1zrk[/youtube] [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: User Interface

One of Google's top executives says the company is okay -- for now -- with Facebook Home's presence on Android devices, but it may change its mind in the future. Sundar Pichai, who recently took over Android in addition to leading Google's Chrome and Apps efforts, spoke about Facebook's new Android experience in an interview with Wired's Steven Levy. Home essentially replaces the primary Android experience by converting the home and lock screens into a Facebook-based content experience through what Facebook calls "Cover Feed." As soon as Facebook announced Home, many wondered if Google w [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Home | Google | Google: Android | Top News

It may not sound like much for a site with more than a billion users and 751 million mobile active users, but a million downloads of Facebook Home is significant. Facebook revealed the figure at a "whiteboard session" held yesterday at the company's Menlo Park, California headquarters. Home had 500,000 downloads as of April 21. So the number has doubled in a few weeks. Facebook also said the profile of users adopting Home was becoming "more normal" with each passing week. (It's not clear what "less normal" would mean in this context.) The Facebook Home app/launcher has been heavily malig [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Home | Facebook: Mobile | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Top News

Since Facebook purchased the filter-friendly photo app Instagram last year, brand adoption has skyrocketed, according to a new study of the top 100 brands by SimplyMeasured. Since purchase last year, the Facebook-owned Instagram has flourished. The post-purchase growth jumped 500% in just a year, going from 22 million active monthly users to nearly 100 million current active users. Brands have joined the filtered-photo migration as well, with 67% of the top 100 brands now on Instagram as of May 1st. This number jumped a whopping 14% from February 1st, making it the fastest growing social ne [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Instagram | Top News

Will Facebook acquire social traffic and navigation app Waze? TechCrunch ran an article today claiming that three Israeli papers, Calcalist, Ynet and The Marker, have reported that Facebook is in talks to acquire the company in a billion-dollar deal that would help further grow Facebook's mobile efforts. According to the article, a private source confirmed the deal along with a price range of $800 million to $1 billion, although a spokesperson from Facebook and from Waze both said they will not comment on rumors or speculation about the business. Waze uses crowdsourcing technology to let [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Acquisitions | Facebook: Apps & App Center | Facebook: Business Issues | Facebook: Mobile | Top News

The online battle for TV ad dollars continues to heat up. Yahoo, AOL, YouTube among others, and now Facebook are all aiming their sites on the burgeoning online video ad market and a share of TV's outsized ad budgets. As first reported in December, Facebook has been shopping new video ad units to agencies. Now, it appears Facebook will be bringing video ads to users' newsfeeds in July, according to The Financial Times. The video ads will appear in newsfeeds on desktop computers as well tablets and smartphones and will be set to autoplay on mute. If a user clicks on a video ad, it will [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Business Issues | Video

After posting higher than expected profits in 2012, Apple ranked No. 6 on today's 2013 Fortune 500 list. Not only was this Apple's first time among Fortune's top ten companies, they were the only Silicon Valley technology company to break into this year's top ten list since Hewlett-Packard fell to No. 15 after reportedly suffering the biggest loss of any Fortune 500 company. Ranking companies by total revenue for their respective fiscal years, Fortune magazine released its annual list of Fortune 500 companies today with Walmart reclaiming first place after sliding to No. 2 in 2012. Other t [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Industry | Facebook | Internet Marketing Industry