Facebook released Q4 and full year results for 2012. The company posted $1.585 billion in quarterly revenue, representing an increase of 40 percent YoY. Full year revenues were $5.09 billion. Ad revenues were $1.33 billion or 84 percent of total quarterly revenue, which was a 41 percent increase over 2011. Mobile revenue represented 23 percent of total ad revenue, up from 14 percent in the previous quarter. Facebook said that Mobile daily users exceeded Web daily users in Q4 for the first time. The following are additional user-numbers highlights: Monthly active users were 1.06 [...]

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Don't use our platform to copy what we do without permission. That seems to be the core issue in a Platform Policy change that Facebook announced on its developer blog about an hour ago. The change, according to Justin Osofsky, Facebook's Director Platform Partnerships, means that the "vast majority" of developers should "keep doing what you're doing." But, in light of Facebook's decision to cut API access to Vine and Voxer within the past week, Osofsky offered this clarification of Facebook's policies: For a much smaller number of apps that are using Facebook to either replicate our fu [...]

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Brands and individuals that are testing out Twitter's new video toy, Vine, are learning the hard way that it doesn't play well with Facebook. Sure, there's a big button to connect your Vine account with Facebook so you can finds friends and connect more easily on the new video platform ... but it's broken. As AllThingsD reported Thursday, Facebook cut off Vine's ability to tap into the Facebook friend graph. Try it, and you'll get a message saying that "Vine is not authorized to make this Facebook request." Facebook didn't completely kick Vine out; after a video is made, users [...]

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Summarizing a report issued by the French government last week the New York Times says that France is considering a range of creative taxation schemes on US based Internet companies -- Google and Facebook in particular. France is trying to generate new revenues amid a challenging economic climate in Europe. Google and Facebook are seen by many European governments as "deep pockets." There's also a punitive quality to the various taxation proposals as well. France (among others) has been frustrated by what it sees as domestic tax avoidance by large Internet companies. It is seeking to c [...]

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Nevermind the underperforming stock price. Facebook employees are still happy enough to have voted the company the top place to work in 2013 in Glassdoor's fifth-annual Employees' Choice Awards. Overall, Facebook scored a 4.7 rating (on a 1-5 scale) and CEO Mark Zuckerberg got a 99 percent approval rating from his employees. This is the second time Facebook has come out on top of the list. It was number one on the 2011 list, then fell to third overall on the 2012 list, which was published late last year. Numerous tech companies scored well in the Glassdoor survey. Google ranked six [...]

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You'll be excused if you think the social media platform battles are starting to look like something you'd see on Romper Room. The latest step in this back-and-forth is Instagram's decision to prevent its images from showing properly on Twitter's website and clients. At the LeWeb conference today, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom confirmed the move and said that his company plans to fully prevent Instagram images from being embedded on Twitter. Here's how he's quoted on the New York Times' Bits blog: We've decided that right now, what makes sense, is to direct our users to the Instagram Web [...]

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Google, Facebook, Twitter and even Starbucks are being criticized and investigated for what several European governments consider to be tax avoidance. In the UK and France in particular Google is under scrutiny. And earlier this week a French newspaper (albeit like the satirical Onion) reported that French authorities had served a whopping EUR 1 billion tax bill on Google. Google has denied that it has received such a bill. Google's practice of billing advertisers and running profits through its Irish subsidiary, which is legal, allows the company to minimize taxes. According to a Reuter [...]

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Call it a "relief rally." After Facebook's Q3 yesterday ($1.26 billion) beat consensus revenue estimates financial analysts changed their outlook on the company, with many shifting recommendations from "neutral" or "hold" to "buy." As a result Facebook saw its shares gain nearly 20 percent by the close of trading on the NASDAQ today. The big sigh of relief that could be heard all over Wall Street was about Facebook's mobile revenues and metrics. There were 604 million monthly active mobile users in Q3 according to the company, representing a steady month over month gain but a big 61 per [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Business Issues | Social Media Marketing

Facebook has released its Q3 financials and there are some solid numbers in the all-important advertising category. Overall, revenue was up to $1.26 billion for the quarter, a 32 percent gain over Q3 2011 and the third consecutive quarter of higher revenues. The company is reporting $1.09 billion in ad revenue for the quarter, a 36 percent increase year-over-year. That sum represents 86 percent of Facebook's total revenue. Perhaps most importantly, Facebook says that 14 percent of its ad revenue came from mobile. That's been something of an achilles heel for the company and it's i [...]

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Facebook's private messages spawned quite an uproar last week when it was uncovered that messages were not only being crawled, but also used towards the overall "Like data" of a page. One of the important lessons that marketers learned from the situation was that the "Like count" wasn't really about likes, rather other interactions (and messaging) that occurs on Facebook.  This led us to ask the question -- Just what does count towards the Facebook Like data? According to the official Facebook Developers page, four different variables make up the Like number: The number shown is the sum o [...]

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Facebook announced they have hit a billion active users and to celebrate they released a TV ad. The TV ad goes through the events, life cycles and routines people go through on a daily basis and explores those emotions conveying how Facebook is there to help you keep track of the things that connect you. The TV ad is named "The Things That Connect Us." Here is the ad: Facebook explains that chairs, doorbells, bridges, and airplanes. "These are things that people use to get together and connect. Facebook is also something that over a billion people around the world use to connect w [...]

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Rumors have come and gone and come again that Facebook will develop it own phone. But that idea makes no sense for the company, says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In an interview today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Zuckerberg told Mike Arrington that it makes more sense for Facebook to work with others than try to build its own device. "It's always been the wrong strategy for us," Zuckerberg said. "It's so clearly the wrong strategy for us" Assuming Facebook did build one -- and Zuckerberg quickly stressed that it wasn't --assume maybe it attracts 20 million people. That [...]

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Market research firm eMarketer has lowered its revenue estimate for Facebook due to "underperformance" so far in 2012 and "questions about the effectiveness of some of the site’s ad products." The firm previously pegged Facebook's 2012 revenues at $5 billion, but is now lowering that estimate to $4.23 billion -- still about 34 percent higher than 2011 revenue. Emarketer says Facebook ad revenue will continue to grow, just not at the rate that it has in the past. The firm estimates Facebook's ad revenue will grow to $5.48 billion next year and $6.81 billion in 2014. Facebook has [...]

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Internet radio app Pandora allows users to pay $36 per year to remove all ads from the service. About 14 percent of Pandora's revenue comes from this subscription service. I'm a subscriber and I happily pay the annual fee. That got me thinking about Facebook and whether there was an appetite for an "ad-free" version -- and how much revenue it might generate. An ad-free Facebook that didn't do data-mining or target ads based on the content of posts would address many of the privacy problems and objections that Facebook is confronting right now. It would also open up a promising new revenu [...]

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Facebook's Q2 revenues are out. In the run up to the earnings announcement there was critical speculation about the company's prospects. In terms of top-line revenues, Facebook beat analyst consensus estimates. Quarterly revenues were $1.184 billion vs. $895 million last year. However the company also reported a net loss of $157 million. Immediately after the release there was a mixed reaction in the financial community, with some arguing analyst expectations were managed to be artificially low. There was general disappointment among many with these results; however some are taking a "wait [...]

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Google and Facebook both increased their spending trying to educate (read: influence) Congress in the second quarter, according to filings made under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995. Companies that employ lobbyists must file these reports on a quarterly basis. The disclosures show that Facebook spent just under $1 million ($960,000) on lobbying in Q2, up from $650,000 in Q1 2012. That compares with $320,000 spent trying to influence lawmakers in Q2, 2011. A wide range of bills and issues were cited on Facebook's disclosures. Among them privacy, intellectual property reform, corporate [...]

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If you live in Washington state a new way to register to vote will soon by available.  A Facebook app will reside on the Secretary of state's page that will exist directly within Facebook.  The AP reports that the app will be the results of collective efforts of Facebook, Microsoft and the state. Washington will be the first state to offer voter registrations on Facebook. Users will have to click on the app and allow Facebook to access their information and will be required to also provide an ID card or drivers licence.  The app will not have access to the state records, rather wil [...]

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The London 2012 Olympic games are upon us.  Today, Facebook and NBC announced a partnership to help bolster interest in both the games and the social network.  The deal will help NBC spread the message about the Olympics though Facebook placements and, in turn, NBC will encourage users to follow along and participate on Facebook. All of the details on the partnership haven't surfaced, but it was made clear that no cash was changing hands -- this is purely a mutually beneficial partnership.  Some things in the works but Facebook will be running "exclusive content" for Olympic fans.   [...]

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AllThingsD is reporting Yahoo has reached a deal with Facebook to drop the patent infringement lawsuit in exchange for expanding their ad and content deal. Kara Swisher, who typically has the inside word on these topics, said the deal was approved this morning by Yahoo’s directors on a telephone meeting. Kara said Yahoo and Facebook will formally announce it "sometime later today." There wil be no cash payments involved in this deal. The specifics of the deal are not clear right now but the main point is Yahoo will drop their patent suit and they will expand their ongoing partnersh [...]

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Historically users chosen a selected email that displays on their profile pages. However, Facebook has recently swept through forcing all displayed email addresses to the @facebook.com option.  The new Facebook messages and email system was launched late 2010, but usage never quite took off. One of the biggest complaints with the change is that it truly changes the way messages are delivered to the user.  The Facebook email addresses send email content directly to the Facebook Message inbox, something that looks nearly identical to traditional Facebook messages. Messages that arrive di [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Business Issues | Facebook: Privacy