With hundreds of millions of Facebook users now engaging on the social network through the use of Android, iPhone and iPad apps it was only a matter of time before the company began serving ads to those platforms and that time now appears to be as early as March.

Sources close to the world’s largest social network say executives at Facebook have already discussed proposed advertising plans with advertising agencies and plan to offer paid “Featured stories” in mobile news feeds as a way to supplement ad space on smaller mobile device displays.

By mixing in sponsored ads with friends feeds users don’t lose screen space and only receive ads that match their interests and the interests of their friends.

Facebook has estimated that almost half of its 845 million users access the network via mobile devices, even one ad served per user per day would mean billions of new ad impressions for the network.  read more

Facebook has nearly captured the market for 1 billion social media users so it only makes sense that some of the countries top brands would want to turn that loyalty to the network into a rewards program and that’s exactly what’s happening at Dunkin’ Donuts, Red Robin, Taco Bell and Quiznos.

Those company’s have signed deals with loyalty marketing start-up Plink who will announced a new quick-serve brand test for partners on Thursday.

The program works by tracking how much money Facebook users spend at each location and then rewarding them with Facebook Credits which can be used to make in-app purchases in such games as CityVille and FarmVille.

To get started users simply register their credit or debit card at Plink.com and then when they use that specific card at participating locations they receive Facebook credits.  read more

Facebook on Wednesday suspended secondary market sharing of the company’s stock in what is very likely a sign that the company plans to go public with an IPO in the near future.

A letter was sent from Facebook’s law firm, Fenwick & West  stating that shares of the company would stop trading immediately although a reason for that decision is still not known.

A recent report said Facebook would release its IPO in May and in an interview with Bloomberg Sam Hamadeh, CEO of PrivCo. said:

“Facebook and companies who do this don’t want to expose themselves to lawsuits related to the fact that some people had it before others and were able to trade on it,” and “The best way to protect yourself is to have no one able to trade.” read more

Multiple sources have revealed that Facebook executives plan to release the company’s IPO in late May 2012. The company is expected to go public in the third week of the month which means they would have to file with the SEC in the next month since it usually takes three to four months for the agency to review a company and approve its IPO.

While late May looks to be the much anticipated day a source close to the plans tells All Things D:

“This IPO planning could all change in a New York minute to another month.”  read more

Fans of Turntable.fm will soon have a similar offering to take advantage of through the Facebook platform. The social network on Thursday announced “Listen With” a new feature that allows users to access a personal chatroom where they can share songs with their Facebook followers.

Tunes are picked up from Spotify and Rdio at this time and the program integrates with real-time sharing technology which was introduced to the Open Graph in September.

Unlike Facebook’s current offering which allows users to see what their friends are listening to and then play them the new program picks up and plays songs right where they are currently streaming. For example if a friend is half way through a song and then changes to a new tune you’ll be taken along with them to the new track. read more

Two years ago Donnelyn Curtis, a librarian at the University of Nevada set up profiles for Joe McDonald (deceased 1971) and his wife Leola Lewis and now after using the accounts for educational purposes they have been shut down by Facebook.

Curtis hadn’t really started to update the accounts until recently when the account went from approximately 100 followers who were mostly friends to over 1,000 people.

According to Curtis when she logged in recently she was met with an automated message from Facebook explaining that creating an account for someone other than herself violated the social networks terms of service.

It’s a pretty common theme for Facebook to kill accounts that don’t appear to be real, however the fact that it took the social network two years to kill off the account is surprising. read more

If you want to receive more Likes on your Facebook fan page or personal wall the trick is to post positive content more than negative. On the other hand if you want more comments a few negative posts is the way to go.

The team at Help for Depression created an infographic that specifically examines how the way we post on Facebook affects the interaction we have with our Facebook friends.

The study finds for example that people with longer status updates who use the second person “you” and talk about sex and religion have the highest friends count. On the other hand people with negative and emotions responses who talk about family and use the first person “I” more tend to have less Facebook Friends.

Data for the study was culled from 83 13-year-old girls, which obviously means it’s a big bias but still worth a closer look. read more

These days it’s easy to give dozens, even hundreds of developers access to your social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…). Those developers typically use that data to post information with your permission, pull your feeds for use on other accounts and for various other reasons.

While most developer uses won’t hurt your social media standing it’s still a good idea to manage those accounts. For that specific purpose the MyPermissions program was created.

The program was created by Avi Charkham when he became frustrated having to search eight different app pages for his numerous social media accounts.  read more

If there’s one thing that will come out of the Occupy Wall Street it’s a new movement towards social media protesting and to serve that purpose organizers of the Occupy Wall Street movement are building a social network that focuses specifically on protests.

Speaking to Wired developer Ed Knutson said:

“We don’t want to trust Facebook with private messages among activists.”

The idea stems from a November issue of RoarMag in which it’s stated:

“In addition to the local squares, we now need a global square where people of all nations can come together as equals to participate in the coordination of collective actions and the formulation of common goals and aspirations. For this reason, we call upon the revolutionary whizkids of the world to unite and assist in the development of a new online platform – The Global Square – that combines the communicative functions of the existing social networks with the political functions of the assemblies to provide crucial new tools for the development of our global movement.”

Visitors to the website will find plenty of helpful tools including an interactive map of protests around the world, a search option to find movements in your area, a Facebook type news feed, debate forums, a space for collaboration efforts, messaging and more. Basically the site will act like Facebook without the games (perhaps an OWS game?). read more

With more than 800 million people logging into a Facebook account at least one time each month it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Facebook was the top searched term of 2011.

According to Experian Hitwise this is the third year in a row Facebook has topped the most search list as the company accounts for 3.1% of all searches, a 46% increase over 2010 numbers.

That search percentage jumps to 3.48 percent if you include variations on the search such as Facebook.com, Facebook Login and www.facebook.com among others.

In face those terms mentions above appear in the top 10 search terms right alongside the likes of YouTube, Craigslist and Yahoo.

Here are the top 10 searches of 2011: read more