Facebook is introducing a new tool that lets users boost their visibility by paying a small fee to have their content displayed more prominently on the social network, essentially turning users into micro-advertisers.
Fees will reportedly vary, but Facebook is initially charging $7 to promote users’ content in testing that began Wednesday with a limited number of U.S. users.
Facebook claims the move is not a planned shift from its current free-to-use model, but an addition to its line of premium services. The promoted-posts-for-users feature was initially tested in New Zealand, and the company says it has conducted similar tests in 20 other countries.
“With Facebook’s revenue growth rate showing a sharp slowdown in recent quarters, many analysts and investors believe the company needs to find new ways to make money,” reports Reuters.
“Last week, Facebook unveiled a feature that lets U.S. users buy and send real gifts, such as eyeglasses, pastries and gift cards to their friends,” explains the article. “Initially available to a limited number of users in the United States, Facebook Gifts could signal the company’s intent to play a bigger role in e-commerce.”
Following Facebook’s announcement that it had reached the one billion user milestone, Mark Zuckerberg posted compelling stats to the Facebook Newsroom.
According to the fact sheet, the social network has experienced over 1.13 trillion “likes” (since February 2009), 140.3 billion friend connections and 219 billion photos uploaded.
However, the data excludes deleted photos. “If we wanted to include all photos ever uploaded, the estimate we have is 265 billion,” explains Facebook. “Photo uploading launched fall 2005.”
Additional numbers include 17 billion location-tagged posts (including check-ins) since the feature’s August 2010 launch, and 62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times since September 2011 (“about 210,000 years of music”).
The median age of registered users has dropped from 26 in 2007 to 22 in 2012. Also, Facebook now has 600 million mobile users.
Facebook announced that it passed the one billion user mark in September, but the news only “confirmed expectations on Wall Street that growth is actually trailing off,” reports Reuters.
The social network acknowledged that the new-user growth will slow down, and there are doubts that “the company can squeeze more and more dollars out of each network member — given well-publicized struggles to monetize the growing ranks of users who access Facebook from mobile devices,” notes the article.
“Facebook has rolled out a spate of initiatives to spur more growth, including a new advertising platform and measurement methods to show marketers they are getting bang for their buck,” Reuters reports. “But it is also exploring options beyond advertising, which accounted for roughly 84 percent of the total revenue in the second quarter.”
This week, the company said it was introducing a fee-based feature that will help U.S. users boost their visibility. It also has a new gift-sending e-commerce effort.
“In its last earnings report, Facebook said revenue increased by 32 percent to $1.18 billion in the second quarter. But that marked the slowest pace of quarterly revenue growth since the first quarter of 2011 — the earliest data available.”
“Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen provides a detailed review of the upcoming Windows 8 on his website. He highlights features of the new bimodal user approach and offers helpful tips based on his experience.
Allen notes that some long-time Windows users might be initially frustrated by the lack of a traditional Start menu. But the new screen is visually pleasing and easy to navigate, he suggests.
“The Start screen displays a scrollable collection of tiles,” he writes. “Each tile represents an app (Mail, Internet Explorer, and Calendar, for example) or feature. Many are live tiles; that is, tiles that display notifications related to that app or feature.”
And although it can sometimes be difficult to find, he writes of the new control called the Charms bar, which offers access to important features like Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings.
“There are a number of things introduced to Windows by the tablet aspect of the bimodal user experience that I found puzzling, especially for a traditional desktop user like myself,” he writes. These include difficulties using multiple monitors, inadvertently switching modes, inability to build hierarchies on the Start screen and difficulty scrolling in desktop view on a tablet.
Allen notes in his conclusion that the bimodal operating system will take some adjustment, but he remains confident that users will adapt quickly, will find touch to be a natural progression and will be particularly impressed with the tablet capabilities.
“The tablet interface is elegant, responsive, and stacks up nicely with other tablets on the market,” he believes. “And with its capability to optionally switch to desktop view right on the tablet, Windows 8 extends to mobile users the flexibility to run traditional applications and become more efficient and productive while on the go.”
Police raided Swedish hosting company PRQ, and as a result many file sharing and streaming sites have been affected. The Pirate Bay co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij founded PRQ.
Although The Pirate Bay was also down recently, this was an unrelated incident, reports TorrentFreak. The Pirate Bay says a power outage caused the problem, and not the PRQ raid.
PRQ owner Mikael Viborg says that police targeted specific hardware, but he is not sure which sites or services they were after. He also notes that “he believes the investigation is related to intellectual property violations,” explains the post.
“Torrenthound.com, linkomanija.net and tankafetast.nu, release blog RLSLOG.net, and the sports streaming sites atdhenet.tv, hahasport.com, sportlemon.tv and stopstream.tv” were all down after the raid. The raid also affected private sites that use PRQ as a host.
Although the PRQ website has returned online, many file-sharing sites remain offline.
The idea of a “data center in a box” has taken hold as demand for Internet data storage rises.
The technology — pioneered by the U.S. military and later adopted by companies like Google and Microsoft — allows companies to store data by stuffing containers full of data centers, and then hooking up the containers to a power and water supply.
Research firm IMS reports the demand for these types of data centers doubled in 2012 and is expected to increase by another 40 percent by next year.
“Data storage and processing is being driven by the growth in mobile computing devices, higher performance computing requirements, increased Internet communication, streaming entertainment, digitization of healthcare and government records, and a migration towards online business models,” explains Liz Cruz, author of the IMS report.
In the short term, this type of data storage is cheaper than building a traditional data center because companies can buy storage as they need it.
In the long run, however, it may prove more costly. But it is also possible that as more companies move into the business of selling this type of storage, the price will drop and the system will become a reasonable long term data storage solution.
According to a new research report, Hollywood’s TV studios are strong enough to fend off disruption, even from Apple.
And that’s largely because of syndication. “Barclay’s says the TV syndication business has doubled its value over the past decade to an estimated $20 billion this year,” reports Variety.
“While cable’s aggressive licensing of broadcast series Stateside has largely fueled that increase, analyst Anthony DiClemente projects continued growth stemming from digital buyers and international syndication, which he says represents the ‘biggest opportunity’ for the studios,” notes the article.
Because there exists such a tangled web of rights controlled by studios across windows and territories, Apple won’t be able to control the living room, according to DiClemente.
“It would be very difficult, not to mention expensive, for new entrants to secure the requisite digital and linear rights to provide consumers with a one-stop content offering,” he writes. “We therefore don’t expect Apple to attempt the costly and logistically daunting task of standalone distribution.”
DiClemente predicts that instead of Apple manufacturing its own TV, as has been the rumor, it will make a set-top box that would integrate with other Apple devices, an approach that would not disrupt TV programmers or distributors.
After an initial failed attempt in June, New York-based startup MoviePass is back, offering 75,000 wait-listed users the opportunity to pay between $19.99 and $34.99 a month to watch up to one in-theater movie per day.
MoviePass users will be able to see movies at any theater in the U.S., so long as it accepts major credit cards.
“Subscription prices are based on MoviePass’s three zoning areas: Members who live by theaters that charge an average of $8 to $10 per ticket can subscribe to the $19.99 tier, while those in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, where tickets can run around $13 to $15 a pop, pay for the most expensive, $34.99 plan,” details Fast Company.
MoviePass has no theater or ticket brokerage partners. So how will it survive?
“Its newest workaround is a MoviePass-branded payment card that members will use like a regular credit card to purchase tickets at theater kiosks,” notes the article. “Starting today, MoviePass members will use its new iOS app to select a theater, a movie, and a showtime. Once you’re within 100 yards of the selected theater, you can check in within the app, which activates your MoviePass debit card using geolocation technology.”
“This doesn’t need to go through anyone’s API, it runs on existing credit card rails, and it allows customers to have mobility and access to more theaters, so we think we’ve solved everyone’s issues,” explains MoviePass CEO Stacy Spikes.
Facebook is getting pressure from privacy advocates to lock down user information while also receiving a push from investors to ramp up digital advertising. In a move that reportedly complies with privacy laws, Facebook has released new ad offerings that allow marketers to more effectively target users.
One method uses email addresses and phone numbers listed on profiles. Another option, called retargeting, pulls information from Internet surfing outside of the social network to be “retargeted” as ads.
Facebook has also teamed up with data-mining company Datalogix to study the correlation between Facebook ads and users’ shopping habits at brick-and-mortar stores. According to Facebook, the research shows every dollar spent on its advertising equates to $3 in incremental sales.
Using its massive user data, Facebook has also expanded its ads to other websites and apps. “Analysts think the experiments point to Facebook eventually establishing its own advertising network, making Facebook ads omnipresent across the Web and smartphones,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
Even though some of Facebook’s new methods aren’t new to the world of online advertising, privacy concerns have been raised. “Facebook maintains it doesn’t sell data about individual users to advertisers, or even let them directly see the data,” notes the article. “But privacy advocates say Facebook deserves special scrutiny because it has in many cases more personal information about people’s real identities than other Internet companies, raising the potential for abuse.”
Better-targeted ads have better click-through rates, and retargeting has shown increased ROI.
Previously, Facebook “has not been the best place for us to advertise,” says Shoebuy CMO James Keller. “Now we are taking whatever inventory we can in the Facebook Exchange because it is working.”
In a recent presentation at the IAB MIXX advertising conference, Joel Lunenfeld, Twitter’s VP of global brand strategy, said that 88 percent of Twitter users follow at least one brand. More than half follow six or more, he said.
“Twitter also studied the reasons why someone follows a brand, and as you might expect, freebies and discounts are definitely a factor. But according to Lunenfeld, people also said they were interested in getting access to exclusive or promotional content,” writes TechCrunch.
Lunenfeld gave some examples of successful brand engagement on Twitter, summarized by TechCrunch: “A tweet from Old Spice asking, ‘Why is it that fire sauce isn’t made from real fire? Seems like false advertising.’ To which Taco Bell responded, ‘Is your deodorant made with really old spices?’ (Old Spice: ‘Depends. Do you consider volcanoes, tanks, and freedom to be spices?’).”
This example showcases the potential for brand-to-brand and brand-to-customer interaction, as well as the potential for conversational ad campaigns.
“As for where the Twitter advertising goes from here, Lunenfeld noted that brands are trying to become more mobile, more real-time, and more local — all strong points for the company,” suggests the post. “He added that Twitter is working to develop ‘more and more ways to get a message across inside a tweet.'”
LinkedIn previously had a deal with Twitter that allowed tweets to appear in LinkedIn streams. That partnership has since ended, but LinkedIn hopes to continue a more relevant type of engagement on its platform with the launch of promoted accounts.
“Yes, it’s sort of like Twitter — if Twitter were only for following bigwigs like Sir Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, even President Barack Obama. And instead of reading what these guys are having for breakfast, LinkedIn says they’ll share things that you actually care about,” Mike Isaac writes for AllThingsD, suggesting users could access valuable business tips and advice.
While the previous Twitter feeds “weren’t always germane to what users were visiting LinkedIn for in the first place,” the promoted accounts have noticeably less (but more targeted) content now, the article notes.
“It’s a small beginning, mind you; the product kicks off with only so many launch partners,” notes Isaac. “If the idea works, though, I imagine the product will scale and become available to more over time. More people to follow means more content flowing through the pipes, which could result in increased engagement on the site.”
The success of the venture relies on these promoted people sharing quality content, he adds.
The promoted accounts allows users to “follow” influencers without requiring a LinkedIn connection request, much like the “Subscribe” feature on Facebook.
Yahoo, AOL and YouTube are working together with the Commission on Presidential Debates to launch “The Voice Of” depots for the general election debates, allowing people to watch the debates live and interact via online tools.
“The 2012 debates can be the foundation for a season of conversation, and the Internet initiative will provide unprecedented access for citizens to participate in that conversation,” explains CPD co-chairs Michael McCurry and Frank Fahrenkopf in a statement.
A counter will keep track of how many viewers are tuned in via the depots. “For example, if 100,000 people are watching, the headline on the sites will read ‘The Voice Of 100,000,'” reports Politico.
The debates will also showcase the debut of Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE Election, which allows subscribers to watch a raw feed of the debates while using motion sensors or Xbox controllers to register moment-to-moment reactions,” notes the article.
Facebook hosted three-and-a-half hours of live programming the night before the first presidential debate, featuring notable guests and panel discussions. Questions were submitted by Facebook users for panelists and interview subjects.
And according to Politico: “While the rest of the social media crowd is striving to be nonpartisan, the news-sharing site Reddit is using the debates as a moment for tech-industry and Internet freedom activism. Reddit is co-sponsoring the Internet 2012 Bus Tour, an eight-day, nine-city tour from Denver to Danville, Ky., the site of the vice presidential debate on October 11.”
The bus will stop for community events along the way to promote “more high-skilled visas for tech companies and better trade agreements to benefit American startups,” while highlighting concerns about legislation that could threaten Internet freedom.
YouTube has announced that for the first time the October general election debates will be available online via live streaming.
“You can watch the debates live and in full on the YouTube Elections Hub, via our partners at ABC News, who will be live streaming all four debates on the ABC News YouTube channel,” notes the YouTube Blog.
“No matter where you are in the world or how you’ll be accessing the Internet, you’ll be able to watch the most important events of the 2012 election on YouTube.”
In addition to the live broadcasts, YouTube will provide commentary and analysis via the eight YouTube Election Hub partners: ABC News, Al Jazeera English, BuzzFeed, Larry King, The New York Times, Phil DeFranco, Univision and the Wall Street Journal.
Each of these partners “will be providing their own unique live and on-demand coverage of the four debates before, during and after. And Univision will also offer a version of the debates translated into Spanish, live,” according to the blog.
For those who may have missed last night’s first Presidential debate from the University of Denver, YouTube has the full debate — in addition to highlight clips — available at youtube.com/politics.
Samsung can begin selling its Galaxy 10.1 tablet after a federal judge lifted the sales ban that had been in effect since June.
Judge Lucy Koh originally issued the injunction “based on the likelihood that a jury would find that a specific Apple design patent had been infringed,” reports AllThingsD. But the jury has since found that the tablet did not infringe a specific patent design, so Koh lifted the injunction.
“We are pleased with the court’s action today, which vindicates our position that there was no infringement of Apple’s design patent and that an injunction was not called for,” said Samsung.
Koh originally did not lift the ban, as the issue remained before an appeals court. She can choose to reinstate the ban after a December hearing if she sees fit.
In a separate case, Samsung filed court papers to include the iPhone 5 in another lawsuit between the two tech giants. Samsung claims it prefers to allow the market to dictate success, but says it cannot do so because “Apple continues to take aggressive legal measures that will limit market competition.”
David Watson, director of product innovation at Netflix, writes about his children and their relationship with the iPad.
On the official Netflix blog, he comments about good news for families: “Netflix ‘Just for Kids’ is now available on iPad, the first mobile version of this special kid-friendly Netflix experience. Now parents, including myself, can be sure their kids find what they want and won’t straggle into something that isn’t appropriate.”
The movie and TV content is geared towards kids aged 12 and under in a “friendly way with large images of their favorite characters and genres such as superheroes, girl power and sing-alongs,” he explains.
“Just for Kids” is available on the iPad 2 and newer versions. It will be available on the original iPad and on Android devices at a later date.
Facebook is introducing a new tool that lets users boost their visibility by paying a small fee to have their content displayed more prominently on the social network, essentially turning users into micro-advertisers.