Gogobot, a Facebook travel app that just launched in January 2012 announced on Wednesday that it has passed the 1 million registered users mark.

Gogobot officially launched in private beta 18 months ago but came out of beta in January. The company now claims that a new users signs up for the program every 15 seconds and that more than 5 million locations have already been shared on Gogobot.

The travel app allows Facebook users to share vacation photos with friends and strangers while giving recommendations to people who post questions about general travel and specific destinations.

Users of Gogobot can also create a “passport” that lists the places they have been alongside reviews and recommendations for those locations. read more

Foursquare users checking in with Facebook permissions synced to their accounts will now find their check-ins plotted across their Facebook Timeline maps thanks to deeper integration announced by the location based service on Tuesday.

Until this point in time only Facebook check-ins and Instagram geo-tagging options were plotted on the Facebook Timeline maps.

Using the program means integrating your Foursquare account with Facebook and then simply checking in at which point your locations will be plotted on the Facebook Timeline map using standard pin placements.

Facebook and Foursquare have also made it so check-ins already map have been updated to mapped out pinned location markers.  read more

Just one week after announcing its organ donor program Facebook is once again jumping into the “public good” sector with a new crisis tool meant to flag the profiles of military personnel when they post content deemed to be harmful or suicidal.

The new tool is an extension of the suicide prevention program Facebook launched in December 2011 which allows other Facebook members to alert then network when suicidal thoughts are expressed by clicking a link next to that persons comment. When the link is clicked Facebook sends an email to the user with suicide prevention resources.

According to military support organization Blue Star families:

“While this is helpful for a military family, there are several specific resources provided to our nation’s military that we wanted to make sure they were aware of at their time of need.”

The new program sends military specific resources such as the Veterans Crisis Line. read more

Facebook on Tuesday rolled out an update to its Facebook Timeline setup that allows users to list whether or not they are an organ donor.

The move is meant to help more than 114,000 people in the Unite States and millions of others around the world who are waiting for transplants for everything from heart and kidneys to liver and other necessities of life.

In a blog entry announcing the new feature Facebook writes:

“Many of those people — an average of 18 people per day –- will die waiting, because there simply aren’t enough organ donors to meet the need. Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis.”

To add the new feature simply visit your Timeline and click on “Life Event” and then “Health & Wellness” followed by the “Organ Donor” option which will allow you to register and if you would like to ad your own personal story.  read more

It’s not every day that a mobile app is acquired by a social media giant for a cool one billion dollars- which explains why Instagram’s acquisition by Facebook was one of the hottest topics a few weeks ago. Infographic Labs, which previously created an infographic on the Rise of Instagram, tracks Instagram’s journey to $1 billion with this infographic design:
read more

Facebook is attempting to make its community safer for 901 million active users and to reach that goal the company announced on Wednesday that it would block malicious URLs, spam messages, phishing attempts and viruses. The company also announced that it has partnered with various virus protection firms including Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, and Symantec.

In a blog post Facebook writers:

“Our URL blacklist system, which scans trillions of clicks per day, will now incorporate the malicious URL databases from these security companies to augment our existing level of protection. So whenever you click a link on our site, you benefit not just from Facebook’s existing protections, but the ongoing vigilance of the world’s leading corporations involved in computer security.”

If that isn’t enough information to get you excited about Facebook’s ongoing efforts to protect users the company also announced the AV Marketplace where users can download free six-month license agreements for full versions of the company’s virus partner software. read more

Facebook’s reliance on social gaming company Zynga to drive in massive revenue for the company has actually decreased since 2011 with the company reporting that the social gaming platform made up just 15% of Facebook’s revenue in Q1 2012 compared to 19% in 2011.

Facebook receives 30% of the revenue Zynga draws from the social network by requiring that Zynga use Facebook credits to power its in-app purchasing system. While Zynga created Zynga.com and recently launched the site as an alternative destination for social gamers who do not necessarily want to log into their Facebook accounts, the company continues to use Facebook credits to power that site and users scores are still published through Facebook.com accounts.

The social network also earns money from Zynga as the company uses Facebook.com to market its products to customers. In 2011 Facebook collected 12% of its revenue from Zynga advertisements while Q1 2012 has watched that number fall to 11%. A partial drop in that number comes from the fact that Facebook received only 4% revenue from advertisers spots displayed on Zynga apps, down from 7% in 2011.  read more

Facebook professional growth app BranchOut has caught on with Facebook users at a rate of 3 new users per second and now in celebration of the company’s 25 million users milestone the company has released an official infographic that celebrates BranchOut’s growth and its recent $25 million in Series C financing ($49 million to date).

In the infographic some interesting numbers are shared, for example BranchOut took just 16 months to reach 25 million users whereas LinkedIn took 65 months to reach that same level of service. BranchOut also points out that it is more apt to grab a more broad audience including “new college graduates, retail workers, nurses, software engineers and military veterans re-entering the workforce.”

The graphic also shows how reliant the company is on Facebook, using the social network to attract 55% of its user base. The company also shows its global reach with 40% of users in the United States and 60% located at international areas all over the world.

Here’s the official BranchOut infographic: read more

Facebook ad engagement in the United States hasn’t been kind to advertisers falling by 8% in the final quarter of 2011 and Q1 2012. While engagement has taken a steep decline Facebook has begun to charge 41% more money for ads worldwide.

Part of the ad drain comes from Facebook’s saturation of ad spots, going from four to seven ads on many pages, a consideration that often leads to lower click-rates as site users have more ad choices to choose from.

Facebook has been able to increase ad prices dramatically while stuffing pages because demand is still outweighing supply. Fro example last year Facebook last year displayed 372 billion ad impressions in almost 200 countries.

Advertising for Facebook however goes beyond simple click-through driven ads, the site needs to prove that it can drive traffic to major sites and Facebook increased its click-through rates for news sites by 196% thanks in large part to the company’s social readers which allows company’s such as Yahoo, The Washington Post and others to display recently read stories on users Facebook walls.  read more

Facebook on Friday announced that it will start to automatically sync a users Timeline address with their Facebook email, ensuring that everyone receives and understand their Facebook email account.

The program will roll out over the next several week and it’s simple to use, for example if your Facebook.com account is listed under the URL Facebook.com/joe.18 your Facebook email address will simple be joe.18@facebook.com.

Facebook since mid-2011 has been making a big push into the email space, attempting to keep users on the site for longer periods of time by allowing them to receive messages in an older format while responding directly from the Facebook platform. Vanity URLs in the meantime rolled out in 2009 but a Facebook email feature was not available at that time. When 2010 rolled around Facebook allowed users to choose an @facebook email address of their very own by choosing a vanity URL.

The new change seems most likely to affect users who never chose a vanity URL.  read more