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

Google is promising that its new Google+ Sign-In is a way to avoid all that "social spam" that unnamed other services (cough, Facebook) "spray" into your social timeline. Hey, I know Facebook can get aggressive. But how about a reality check on Google's supposedly altruistic move? Google Account Sign-In Had No Social Worries For one, I had a perfectly good way of logging in to things via Google without worrying somehow, some application or website was going to create the social spam that Google's worried about in its blog post today. It was called a Google Account. Not a Google+ Account. A G [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Google: Google+ | Top News

Facebook and AddThis, the social sharing platform company, are named as defendants in a lawsuit that claims two violations of patent infringement law. Rembrandt Social Media, a patent-holding company, filed the suit last week in Virginia, saying that Facebook infringed on two of its patents and AddThis on one. As Ars Technica reported, Rembrandt is working with the family of Joannes Jozef Everardus Van Der Meer, a Dutch programmer described in the lawsuit as "a pioneer in the development of user-friendly Web-based technologies," who died in 2004. Van Der Meer, who once owned the surfb [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: Legal | Legal: Patents | Top News

It appears that Facebook will be conforming with social naming norm. The Verge is reporting that all of the "subscribe" actions are going to be converted to "follow" actions.  This will not change the "friend" functionality, rather is simply a name change for the subscribe feature. The name change appears to be a play to entice more users to follow celebrities on Facebook. Following has been the long-time verb of record when describing a 1-way connection in social, not Facebook's "subscribe" verbiage.  Additionally, the "subscribe" feature could be misleading as users can subscribe to an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: User Interface | Uncategorized

It quite surprising that mobile Facebook users haven't been able to share articles on mobile devices. Facebook's "Share" button allows users to quickly pass along interesting posts to their own audience. It's a frequently used element on the web version of the social network. Share however hasn't been available for mobile devices ... until today: Now mobile web users can quickly use the share button for posts - whether from profiles or pages. Other non-post items (i.e. Events,Sponsored Pages, etc) cannot be shared via the mobile web. This feature has not yet been rolled out to mobile ap [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: Mobile

Been buying Facebook Likes to make your page seem, well, more likable? Know a site that has? Facebook doesn't like that, and now it's taking steps to remove those it deems fake. Writing today on the Facebook blog, the company said the change is likely to impact less than 1% of the Likes for any particular page and will aim to remove Likes such as those generated by malware, "deceived" users or purchases. From the post: We have recently increased our automated efforts to remove Likes on Pages that may have been gained by means that violate our Facebook Terms. On average, less than [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Top News

A new Facebook plug-in has been revealed, the "recommendations bar."  The bar can be installed on websites and will help match visitors with other content they may enjoy on the site.  User data (likes & shares) are utilized in order to provide visitors with the best possible recommendations. The bar will pop up in the bottom right side of the page and will show a few similar articles as well as a like button for the current page.   If a user does click on a recommended link from the bar, they are taken directly to that page on the website.  Facebook is reporting that in early tests [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Social Media Marketing

More than one-fifth of the web links to Facebook in some way, and almost eight percent use Facebook's Open Graph tags -- two numbers that offer a glimpse of Facebook's deep grip on the web. The numbers come from a Zyxt Labs study of about 1.3 billion URLs earlier this year. The study found that more than 242 million pages, about 21.7 percent of the total studied, referenced at least one Facebook URL -- usually things such as the Like and Share buttons and other social widgets, but also traditional links to Facebook profiles or Facebook Group pages. Here's a look at the breakdown of the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics | Features & Analysis | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: General | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

Over the past several months there have been a number of stories about how retailers and brands are shuttering their Facebook stores because no one was paying attention. The outlook would thus appear to be dimming for so-called "F-commerce." However earlier this week shopping site TheFind  launched a social shopping app (soon to be an iPad app too) called Glimpse. It may yet prove to be a model of sorts for commerce on Facebook and social commerce more generally. Some have argued it takes its inspiration from (or copies) Pinterest and seeks to be its rival. It's Pinterest-like in [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Business Issues | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: Open Graph

Earlier this week, Facebook touted some data showing how the media has reaped benefits from the Subscribe button -- but at least one journalist isn't so sure that the numbers mean much. The Subscribe button launched in September and added Twitter-like functionality to Facebook; users could subscribe to anyone else's public posts, whether they were Facebook friends or not. Facebook's Vadim Lavrusik, who manages the company's journalist program, wrote that thousands of journalists are using the Subscribe button, and that the average journalist has seen a 320 percent increase in subscribers [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics