Facebook and Apple have teamed up to further integrate the world’s largest social network with the recent Mac OS X Mountain Lion update.
Mountain Lion Version 10.8.2 incorporates Facebook sharing with various system components and Apple created apps.
OS X users simply sign into their Facebook accounts through System Preferences at which time they gain access to new abilities. The integration closely mirrors the setup already offered by Twitter integration.
Some of the apps that now include integrated Facebook sharing include Safari, Preview and Contacts.
Apple has also integrated sharing capabilities with the Notification Center so apps do not need to be directly accessed to offer sharing capabilities. read more
Winklevoss Twins Tyler and Cameron have invested $1 million on SumZero, a social network that journalists call “Facebook for investors.” Much like StockTwits and Stockr the website allows visitors to join together and share investing and stock trading tips.
Unlike other sites SumZero focuses solely on buy-side investment analysts who work in hedge funds, mutual funds, and private-equity firms.
The community of nearly 7,500 members has been handpicked by SumZero co-founder Divya Narendra. According to the Wall Street Journal Narendra has rejected nearly 75 percent of applicants.
The Winklevoss twins won a $20 million cash settlement against Facebook and $45 million in private Facebook stock. As we all known by now that stock is worth approximately half of its original value. Given the stock issues faced by Facebook perhaps SumZero is the perfect investment for the brothers. read more
Students not only hate going back to school, they outright refuse to share information about products relating to back-to-school sales. A recent study by social software company Expion has found that back-to-school posts online are shared far less often than other posts in terms of Facebook “likes.”
To reach its conclusion Expion examined 18 of the top department stores, mass merchandisers, pharmacy stores, internet retailers, warehouse stores, and even dollar stores to check out fan reactions to certain types of posts.
While regular sales and other promotions were often shared by fans of the 18 store types, back-to-school posts were liked 79 percent less than just about every other subject.
Researchers examined how many likes each post received based on every 10,000 fans the company has, allowing for an accurate picture of a posts virality.
The study also found that brands shied away from too much back-to-school hype with only 16 percent of their posts focused on back-to-school sales. read more
Social media networks are big traffic drivers and when it comes to dominating the referral market no website is bigger than Facebook. While the world’s largest social network might drive 85.8% of online shopping sessions, Pinterest and its 11.3% referral traffic brings in the bigger spenders.
A new study by RichRelevance examined 700 million “shopping sessions” and found that shoppers who enter an online commerce portal from Facebook stay on the website in question longer and return to the online retail site more regularly. Facebook referrals average 7 pages per session while the study found Pinterest referrals check out only 4 pages and Twitter users stick around for just 3 session views.
The study also found that Facebook customers convert into sales 2.63% of the time while Pinterest customers buy .93% of the time and Twitter customers convert higher at 1.09%.
According to RichRelevance much of Facebook’s success appears to be from “Sponsored Stories” ads which tend to drive specific users with possible vested interested in certain brands.
Bing and Facebook further integrated their partnership on Thursday. Bing is now capable of allowing users to search Facebook photos for their accounts and friends accounts after authorizing the feature via the Bing app.
When searching the images section on Bing.com users will now see their results listed in a Pinterest-style layout (pictured above).
Bing takes its Facebook photo searching one step further, added the ability to search for specific keywords that have been added to photo captions or album titles, a feature even Facebook has not integrated on its own platform. read more
It’s about time! Facebook on Thursday began rolling out the new version of its iOS mobile based application to Apple users. As promised the mobile network application is much faster and performs at a higher level.
Before the update an HTML5 heavy application caused Facebook users to wade through an ultra-slow mobile version of the social networks system. Even simply opening the Facebook app took longer than other programs installed on a users mobile device.
In an interview with All Things D on Thursday morning Facebook iOS mobile product manager Mick Johnson admitted that users expected more from the app:
“People have different expectations when it comes to using Facebook for iOS. They expect a level of performance and speed that just wasn’t there.”
In the interview Johnson claims that benchmark speed tests show that basic functions such as scrolling through a news feed, viewing photos and loading the app are faster by 200%. read more
Facebook in its never ending attempt to increase revenue via ads is preparing to test a new set of advertisements that will invade a users news feed.
Unlike past efforts the new ads will not require a user or their friends to have visited a brand page or website before the ads show up.
In the past a company could only advertise within a Facebook users news feed if that user had liked their brand page or interacted in some way with the brand. That form of advertising provided targeted user traffic but didn’t allow company’s to attract new users to the brand. read more
Facebook’s use of facial recognition is once again coming under the watchful eye of Germany’s lawmakers. Officials this week launched a new probe into the social networks use of photo collecting based on its technology. Lawmakers are concerned that Facebook is taking photos without user consent.
Lawmakers in June launched a similar probe at which time data protection commissioner Johannes Casper was suspended for offering Facebook more time to update its policies. Facebook since Casper’s threat has not updated its practices. Casper has now re-opened the investigation. If Facebook is found to have illegally collected photos via face-recognition software without a users consent it could face millions of dollars in fines.
Facebook in the meantime spoke with Mashable and said of its practices:
“We believe that the photo tag suggest feature on Facebook is fully compliant with EU data protection laws. During our continuous dialogue with our supervisory authority in Europe, the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, we agreed to develop a best practice solution to notify people on Facebook about photo tag suggest.”
Facebook rolled out the facial recognition program to all users, forcing them to opt-out rather than to opt-in to the new software option.
Surely Facebook’s acquisition of facial recognition software company Face.com in June 2012 didn’t help their now re-opened case in Germany.
Does Facebook’s facial recognition software freak you out?
Instagram isn’t just about adding filters to images, 40% of America’s top 100 brands are now using the social photo sharing website to build a stronger web presence while attracting new supporters.
The company Simply Measured conducted a quick study by examining the Interbrand Top 100 Global Brands list and then examining which of those company’s have a presence on Instagram. In comparison 98% of those brands are on Facebook and 94% are on Twitter.
Instagram is growing in important now that it has grown from 15 million iPhone users since the beginning of 2012 to more than 80 million iPhone and Google Android users since being purchased by Facebook.
Web users these days grow tired of the same old marketing practices at a rather alarming rate, with more brands realizing the power photos and Instagram integration can bring to their brands we can expect to see more Instagram accounts for top brands in the near future. read more
Facebook on Friday started rolling out Timeline pages for the mobile version of Facebook, four months after the company debuted the interface for Facebook.com
The new output was discovered by Inside Facebook but has not rolled out to all users at this time. Typically when Facebook rolls out a new feature it beta tests changes for a small subset of users then pushes the change to all of its 900+ million users over a short time period.
The new design includes the page’s cover photo, added About section information and even new icons for a page’s photos, fan base details, etc.
Mobile users will also notice a larger “Like” button that spans across the width of the screen. Pages with a “message” button however have a smaller like button.
By adding a cover photo and page descriptions to mobile output users are expected to gather a more clear understanding of what a page is about, while the larger Like button Facebook believes will lead to higher engagement rates and ultimately better mobile device revenues. read more
Facebook and Apple have teamed up to further integrate the world’s largest social network with the recent Mac OS X Mountain Lion update.
