Facebook 2013 Status of Korean Market

http://www.slideshare.net/Innobirds_Media/innobirds-wisebirds-annual-report-2013#

2013 Facebook Marketing Annual report [Korea] - Innobirds,Wisebirds from Innobirds Media

Facebook To 6M Users: We Moved Fast And Broke Your Privacy

http://readwrite.com/2013/06/21/facebook-to-6m-users-we-moved-fast-and-broke-your-privacy#awesm=~o9WsOsLcwao0yA

Facebook, one of whose core principles is "Move fast and break things," appears to have done just that with the contact information of some six million users.

The social network admitted that a complex bug involving the way it stores user phone numbers and email addresses of its users may have "inadvertently" exposed that information to other users.

Facebook used this information to make friend recommendations and to make other recommendations smarter. For instance, it would match email and phone data to make sure it didn't prompt you to invite someone to Facebook if they were already on the service; instead, it would prompt you to add such a person as a friend.

Unfortunately, a bug in Facebook's software stashed some of that phone and email data in other users' profiles. Those who downloaded their profiles may have thus also saved off contact information they otherwise wouldn't have had.

Here's how Facebook describes the bug:

Because of the bug, some of the information used to make friend recommendations and reduce the number of invitations we send was inadvertently stored in association with people’s contact information as part of their account on Facebook. As a result, if a person went to download an archive of their Facebook account through our Download Your Information (DYI) tool, they may have been provided with additional email addresses or telephone numbers for their contacts or people with whom they have some connection.

[...]

We've concluded that approximately 6 million Facebook users had email addresses or telephone numbers shared.

Oops.

Summary; The social network may have inadvertently shared your email and phone number with people you "may have some connection" to.

Facebook’s Mobile Layout for Business Pages Highlights Location

http://socialtimes.com/facebooks-mobile-layout-for-business-pages-highlights-location_b124894

Devon Glenn on April 23, 2013 3:50 PM
Today Facebook has revealed a new layout for business pages on its mobile application that will help users find businesses while they’re on the go.
In the new version, a map of the nearest store location, company contact information, customer reviews, check-in data, and the company’s business hours are near the top of the screen, ahead of status updates and comments.
The view changes slightly depending on whether the viewer is looking at the company’s main page, an individual branch, or the administrator’s page. Page administrators will be able to switch between “admin” and “public” views.

Our sibling blog InsideFacebook notes that “The layout, with a top row of buttons and a prominent map and recommendations module, is similar to the design Facebook had been using for its local search product Nearby.”
The changes will appear on mobile browsers and the Facebook iOS app starting today. An Android version is coming soon, according to Facebook.
“As a Page owner, there’s no need to do anything to prepare your Page in advance of these updates, but it’s important to make sure the information currently listed on your Page is complete and up-to-date,” the company said.
Page administrators will also be able to “pin” important posts, such as special offers or videos, higher in the feed.
In the announcement, Facebook did not say precisely how many people are accessing Facebook Pages on the social network, but the post noted that almost half of the “millions” that do are using their mobile phones.

REVIEW: The Facebook Phone

http://www.businessinsider.com/htc-first-and-facebook-home-review-2013-4

You can argue about technicalities all you want, but the HTC First is the first real Facebook phone.
Yes, it's pretty much just an Android phone with a Facebook layer on top. And yes, the hardware is built by HTC, not Facebook.
But this is our first taste of Facebook's true vision for mobile, one where it wants to give you the ability to turn any phone into a Facebook phone.
The HTC First just happens to be the first device to ship with that experience right out of the box.
Click here for hands-on photos of the HTC First and Facebook Home >

First things first: What is Facebook Home?

Facebook Home is an Android app that acts a bit differently than the regular smartphone apps you're used to. You can install it on several Android phones like the Galaxy S III and HTC One, but the HTC First is the only phone available that ships with Facebook Home running right out of the box.
It's best to think of Facebook Home as a wrapper for Android that replaces your home screen with a visual slide show of photos and status updates from your Facebook friends. It's called Cover Feed, and it hides your other apps and Google services beneath all that Facebook stuff.
The other main component of Facebook Home is a messaging product called Chat Heads that syncs with your Facebook messages and regular text messages. Chat Heads let you receive and respond to messages on top of any app you're using. (It's an awesome feature, but more on that in a bit).
The rest of Android sits beneath Facebook Home, so all your apps and other services are hidden in a separate app menu, not on the regular home screen like you see on most phones.

Using Facebook Home

So what happens when you have no control over what appears on your phone's home screen?
It becomes a mess.
With Cover Feed, you're a slave to whatever your friends decide to post on Facebook at that moment. On Monday, for example, my HTC First was full of depressing news, commentary, and photos related to the bombings at the Boston marathon.
Later in the week, it was all selfies and photos of my friends' breakfasts.
By Friday, it was back to Boston and the manhunt for the bombing suspects.
But I do see the value in Cover Feed. It turns your phone into a reflection of what's happening at the moment, whether it's good, bad, violent, or completely inane. That's probably really useful for some people, especially those who are already obsessed with Facebook.

Cover Feed also encourages you to engage a lot more with your Facebook friends. I'm not a heavy Facebook user, but I did find myself getting sucked in a lot more than usual, liking and commenting on status updates and photos from my friends just because all that stuff was sitting in front of me on the home screen.
And Cover Feed really is gorgeous, full of big, beautiful photos with a white text overlay for the captions. The images flow behind the text, and it's very pleasing to swipe through them. I'd like to see the regular Facebook app adopt that design style.
Cover Feed is central to the Facebook Home experience, but it's also the most polarizing feature. It's a matter of preference. Do you want to see Facebook and only Facebook when you switch on your phone? If the answer is yes, then you'll love it. If the answer is "no," or "well, maybe..." then Cover Feed will probably annoy you.
Now on to the part of the phone that you'll love no matter how you feel about Facebook: Chat Heads.
With Chat Heads, Facebook solved a problem with smartphone messaging that we didn't even realize we had: You shouldn't have to close out of whatever you're doing in order to communicate with someone.

Steve Kovach/Business Insider

Here's how it works: Whenever you get a Facebook message or text, a tiny circle with your Facebook friend's photo appears over whatever you're doing. You can choose to respond by tapping the photo, or tap and drag it away if you want to respond later.
It's brilliant.
Chat Heads remove the friction from messaging on your phone. There's no more tapping around, switching between apps, or digging for a message later. It floats on top of whatever you're doing and can disappear with a swipe. Everyone from Apple to Microsoft to BlackBerry should copy the concept on their respective mobile operating systems. It's that good.
That's Facebook Home in a nutshell: Cover Feed and Chat Heads. The phone pretty much forces you to spend a majority of time in a Facebook world. If you want the rest of your stuff: Gmail, Chrome, Twitter, games, etc., you have to dig beneath the Facebook layer.

Steve Kovach/Business Insider

It's my biggest beef with Facebook Home, and something I suspect will turn off a lot of potential users. As Mark Zuckerberg said when he first introduced the product, Facebook is the most popular individual app on smartphones. But when you look at the total time spent on phones, most of it is gaming, productivity, and other apps. In that sense, Facebook Home is a barrier to the stuff most people want to do on their phones.
To put it simply, unless you're absolutely obsessed with all things Facebook, unless you mostly use your phone for Facebook and not much else, unless you don't mind ceding control of your home screen to Facebook's Cover Feed algorithm (and eventually advertising), you're better off with a regular Android phone.

The Hardware

At first glance, the HTC First is a simple-looking, unimpressive device. It's about as basic as you can get: a plain black rectangular slab with rounded edges.
The First is still solid and well-built, with a rubbery backing and a high-resolution 4.3-inch display. It can also connect to AT&T's LTE network, the fastest type of data network available.

Steve Kovach/Business Insider

The First won't turn heads like the HTC One or iPhone 5, but that's probably not the point. It's a cheap ($100) proof-of-concept device designed to show off what Facebook has accomplished with Android. Buying a First is buying into Facebook's people-centric vision of mobile.
There is one hidden benefit that'll probably delight some hardcore Android fans: If you switch off the Facebook Home app under settings, the First runs the clean, unmodified version of Android. That's a rare thing these days outside of Google's Nexus line of phones. And getting one for just $100 is a pretty good deal.

Should you buy it?

Do you like Facebook?
I mean, do you really, really like Facebook?
Do you like Facebook so much that it's pretty much all you want to see when you turn on your phone?
If yes, you should buy the HTC First. If not, or you're not quite sure, you're better off with a normal Android phone.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/htc-first-and-facebook-home-review-2013-4#ixzz2RC9sjfop

Social Networking For Marketers: How Pinterest Crushes Facebook [Infographic]

http://readwrite.com/2013/04/17/social-networking-for-marketers-pinterest-crushes-facebook-infographic

Guest author Justin Smith is product engagement manager for BloomReach.

Understanding what people do on different social networks is the key to effectively using those networks for marketing. Companies currently spend 8.4% of their marketing budgets on social media, and that’s expected to grow to 21.6% in the next five years. But with so many social networks competing to grab marketing dollars, determining the most effective channels can be extremely difficult. To illustrate, let’s look at how Facebook and Pinterest stack up against one another.

Different Networks For Different Reasons

While both Facebook and Pinterest offer deep customer segmentations and user engagement, it would be a mistake to target audiences in the same way across both networks. For example, you wouldn’t market your product to someone shopping at a trendy boutique the same way you would to someone walking down the street with their friends. In a store, you’d likely look to make a sale, while on the street you’d probably have more luck building brand awareness.

Similarly, BloomReach’s analysis consistently shows that Pinterest has a higher concentration of people who are in a ‘buy’ state of mind, while Facebook users are more interested in interacting with friends - and brands. (According to Paul Adams, Facebook’s global head of brand design, Facebook’s strength is relationship-building, noting that many lightweight interactions over time can help promote brands.)

Traffic Analysis Tells The Tale

That is borne out by BloomReach’s analysis of total traffic – 46,277,543 site visits – for a set of retail clients from Sept. 20 through Dec. 31, 2012. We looked at five key metrics: total traffic, revenue per visit, conversion rate, bounce rate and average pages viewed. While Facebook delivered more than 7.5 times the traffic, Pinterest handily won the remaining four areas:

• Pinterest traffic spent 60% more than did traffic coming from Facebook.
• Pinterest traffic converted to a sale 22% more than Facebook.
• Facebook traffic bounced 90% of the time, compared to 75% for Pinterest.
• Facebook users viewed an average of 1.6 pages. Pinterest users saw an average of 2.9 pages – a 76% difference.

The average revenue per visit for Pinterest traffic was more than $1.50. But while Pinterest is able to drive highly lucrative leads – and the release of Pinterest’s Analytics Tool for Businesses should help companies make use of them - it can deliver only a relatively limited set of eyeballs.

Facebook Still Rules Awareness

If a company’s goal is to simply reach a larger audience to create or maintain brand awareness, Facebook remains the best option. Its sheer volume of users – 1.06 billion active monthly users, 680 million mobile users and 618 million daily users – and the army of people ready to sell impressions make it an easy channel to leverage. But it may be difficult to realize an immediate return on marketing investments on the network.

Perhaps the best approach is to look for ways to optimize Facebook campaign while expanding Pinterest presence. Both Facebook and Pinterest should become larger parts of the media mix model as visitor referrals from these sites grow. At the end of 2012, only 2.7% of total traffic in our analysis came from the networks, demonstrating that social commerce is still in an early stage. In the meantime, though, it seems fair to say that Pinterest is a more efficient marketing channel than Facebook.

Tags:

• Marketing,
• Social Networks,
• Facebook,
• Pinterest

Facebook Home Shows Endless Possibilities For Android Launchers [Poll]

If you really love Facebook on your smartphone, today is a big day for you. Facebook Home – the social giant’s new skin for Android – launches today. Facebook also has a dedicated phone running home, the HTC First, which is now available at AT&T stores. Are you so addicted to the world’s largest social network that you would turn your phone into a Facebook-centric love fest?

Are there any other services that you cannot live without where you would want your smartphone to be all in all the time with it? For instance, would you want an Instagram Phone? Maybe a Spotify Phone? Twitter Phone? Or maybe it would be an Amazon Phone? All of these companies could do what Facebook has done and create a launcher skin that lays on top of Android and give their service the front-and-center treatment.

If you could have any skin you wanted on a smartphone, what would it be? That is the topic of this week’s ReadWrite Mobile poll.

 

 

Facebook Home user interface What Facebook Home Does

The HTC First – also known as the “Facebook Phone” – is really just an Android with an application layer that gives the user the option to use Facebook as its application “launcher.” That is Facebook Home. A launcher is the user interface that companies use to differentiate experiences on Android. For instance, Samsung’s “TouchWiz” is technically a launcher. So is HTC’s “Sense.” In fact, if we really want to get into it, the stock Android user interface that can be found in Google Nexus devices is technically its own launcher as well. Another term for launcher is “skin.” 

On the HTC First, if you do not want to use Facebook Home, you can strip it away and the launcher left underneath is just plain Android. 

When you turn on a device with Facebook Home, you get a screen that slowly scrolls through your Facebook newsfeed. This is called Cover feed, where you can swipe to see recent updates from Facebook. If you get a message from Facebook Messenger, your friend’s head will pop up on the screen, no matter what app you are using. You can toss the head around the screen, then throw it out on the bottom when the conversation is done. This is known as ChatHeads and it is oddly pleasing, in a weird, sadistic type of way.

The launcher will allow you to open any apps that you have downloaded through Google Play. The app drawer accessible through Home is essentially the portal between Facebook’s custom user interface layered on top of Android and Android itself. 

That’s it. Facebook Home is not complicated (though it can be a little confusing going between the Home experience and Android). It is sleek, kind of fun and really delivers exactly what it sets out to do – make your smartphone all Facebook, all the time.

Opportunity For Everybody

Because Home is so simple at its base level, Facebook has essentially created the blueprint for any company to do the exact same thing to Android. Facebook does have a bit of an advantage because it has a variety of services it can bake into Home (like Messages, Camera, Newsfeed, Pages and so forth), but the basic principle is easy to replicate.

There are several third-party launchers for Android available through Google Play. There is the ADWLauncher, GO Launcher, Launcher Pro, Regina 3D Launcher, Crazy Home, Zeam Launcher and an endless count of others. These all provide interesting user interfaces for Android but none are really tied to a specific service. 

For instance, Twitter could probably make a great launcher for Android. The micro-blogging service is transforming from a straight message platform to get into the TV space, the music space and direct people to apps and media through its new Cards feature that it is rolling out. We call this Portal 2.0 and it would look great as a central user interface to a smartphone.

Amazon could easily do the same thing. The e-commerce king has the transactional elements to turn your smartphone into a buying machine while also serving up music, video and apps. An Amazon Android phone has long been rumored to be in the works. Amazon is likely more interested in forking Android (creating its own build based on the source code that Google releases) than just layering its own functionality on top the way Facebook has. That is, after all, what it did for the Kindle Fire device.

Instagram? Why not. It doesn’t have the apps and media, but it can use Android for that and have deep Facebook integration anyway (it is owned by Facebook). And you could have all those pretty Instagram pictures scrolling as your home screen.

The possibilities are basically endless. Heck, even Apple could create a launcher for Apple based on iOS features. Are custom-built launchers from prominent third parties something that users want? You tell us. Take the poll and let us know in the comments how you would skin and Android to make it the perfect device for you.

http://readwrite.com/2013/04/12/facebook-home-shows-the-endless-possibility-of-android-launchers-poll

Smartphone users check Facebook 14 times a day

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/28/tech/mobile/survey-phones-facebook/index.html

Americans spend, on average, a half hour a day visiting Facebook via their phones, according to a new survey.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• New survey tracks Americans' mobile phone habits and Facebook use
• Respondents check Facebook an average of almost 14 times a day
• Peak Facebook use is in the evenings just before bedtime
• Survey also found 50% of users admit to checking Facebook while at a movie

(CNN) -- Think you use your phone to look at Facebook a lot? Unless you're doing it at least 14 times a day, you're actually below average.

That's just one of the surprising revelations in a research report by IDC released Wednesday. The study tapped 7,446 iPhone and Android users in the U.S. between 18 and 44 — representative of the 50% of the population that uses smartphones — and asked them questions about their phone usage across one week in March.

Depending on your perspective, many of the results are either depressing or confirm what you knew all along. For example, it seems that 79% of smartphone users reach for their devices within 15 minutes of waking up. A clear majority — 62% — don't even wait 15 minutes, and grab their phones immediately. (Among 18- to 24-year-olds, the numbers rise to 89% and 74%.)

Given that the survey was sponsored by Facebook, most of the questions focus on the social network. Which is, it seems, only the third most popular app on your smartphone, after email and the browser. Still, 70% of smartphone users are frequent Facebook visitors, with more than half of them checking it every day.

Peak Facebook time is during the evening, just before bed. But any time's good: on average, we visit the Facebook app or the site 13.8 times during the day, for two minutes and 22 seconds each time. Our average total daily mobile time on the site — and remember, this is just via our smartphones — is half an hour.

That's roughly a fifth of all the time we spend communicating; it's only slightly less time than we spend texting. On weekends, we check Facebook more than we text.

Any place seems to be good to check Facebook, too. Some 46% of us check it when we're shopping or running errands; 48% use it at the gym. Even preparing a meal gives 47% of us no respite from the social network. (Well, what else are you going to do while you're waiting for the microwave to ping?)

Perhaps the most unpardonable sin: 50% of smartphone users admit to checking Facebook while at a movie. We hope they mean only during the ads.

So what are we spending all that time doing? Well, for about half of that daily half-hour on the social network, we're simply browsing our News Feed. The rest of the time is divided fairly evenly between Facebook messaging and posting updates. Half of Facebook users play games via the service on their phone a few times a day.

Does the smartphone survey ring true to you? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Hey, Facebook! Even You Don't Need A Facebook Phone

http://readwrite.com/2013/03/29/hey-facebook-even-you-dont-need-a-facebook-phone

If the rumors are true — and given Facebook's management of the press, I suspect they are — then by next week the world will finally have its "Facebook Phone."

Whoopee. A device, and possibly an entire operating system, that's almost wholly unnecessary and likely to benefit pretty much no one — neither Facebook nor its users. The fact is, iPhone and Android users are certainly not hurting for Facebook access. Is there really more that Facebook can offer us — or more data it can capture from us — by having its own smartphone OS? Unlikely.

Like It Or Not, Here It Comes

Nonetheless, the die appears cast. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and others now agree that Facebook's coy "Come see our new home on Android" announcement scheduled for next week is in fact the official coming out of the long-rumored Facebook Phone. Nick Bilton and Brian Chen, writing for the Times, assert that Facebook is set to announce its own version of Android, one "specifically optimized for Facebook and designed for an HTC phone":

When the device is turned on, it will immediately display a Facebook user’s home screen, the source said, a fact reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. Facebook’s camera and messaging apps will be the default apps for the core functions of the phone.

Facebook should know better. Its own bought-and-paid-for data shows that there's really no need for a Facebook phone.

We Are Already Facebook Junkies

Earlier this week, a Facebook-sponsored IDC survey of iPhone and Android users revealed, shockingly, that we are a nation of Facebook junkies. The average smartphone user apparently checks his or her Facebook status nearly 14 times every single day.

Facebook is the third most popular smartphone activity, according to the IDC data; 70% of respondents said they use their smartphones to access the social network. (Email was tops at 78%; Web browsing came in next, at 73%.) In other words, Facebook trumps maps, search, games and other activities on iPhones and Androids. Of the respondents who use Facebook on their smartphones, 61% check it from their phone at least once a day.

It's hard to see just how much a Facebook phone, or Facebook OS, could shift these Facebook-friendly numbers. (Which, again, Facebook paid for.) Assuming you believe IDC, almost half (43%) of all respondents already check Facebook from their phone daily. Facebook would doubtless like to push that number up higher, but you have to wonder how much additional marginal usage it can squeeze by shoehorning users into Facebook Messenger instead of text messaging.

More data points on Facebook usage from the IDC survey include:

Average daily time smartphone users spent on Facebook is 32 minutes, 51 seconds.
Average number of daily sessions on Facebook is 13.8. These sessions typically last 2 minutes, 22 seconds.
Overall numbers for Facebook usage are higher on the weekends than on weekdays, and also higher closer to bedtime than during the day.
When broken down by specific activity, those 13.8 daily sessions are comprised of users checking their newsfeed (seven times per day on average), using Facebook messaging (4.1) and updating their status (2.7).
16% of Facebook smartphone users play games on Facebook daily.
Facebook consumes an astounding one of every four minutes of time smartphone users spend on "social and communications activities."
Nearly 50% of users access Facebook from their smartphone while doing errands, shopping, preparing dinner and working out.
Strangely enough, these numbers are nearly exactly the same for people engaged in physically social activities. IDC says that approximately 50% access Facebook from their phone while at class, eating out, at a concert, and even while at the movies.

What To Get The Facebook User Who Has Everything?

In other words, if a user has a smartphone, it's pretty clear that he or she can already engage with Facebook at any time and from any place to his or her heart's content. So if there is a Facebook Phone, the strategy behind it is probably much less about usage and more about Facebook encroaching directly on Google territory: search, maps and local advertising. That's what a Facebook Phone should focus on.

Though the survey naturally focused on Facebook and social media, it offered several other interesting facts, including:

155 million, or about 50% of the entire U.S. population uses a smartphone, with this number expected to climb to 181 million (57% of the population) by the end of this year.
79% reach for their smartphone within 15 minutes of waking, and a surprisingly high 62% grab their smartphone the moment they wake. The numbers are even higher for those in the 18-24 demographic.
Similarly, 79% of respondents (not necessarily the same as above) have their smartphones with them for "all but up to 2 hours of their waking day."
25% of respondents can't recall not having their phone at their side.
18-24 year olds might be doing something suspicious on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. According to IDC's methodology statement: "During Tuesday through Thursday, 18-24 year-old respondents were underrepresented." IDC had to adjust its weighting to counter this unexplained drop.

Facebook revamps site, tweaks mobile apps

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/07/tech/social-media/new-facebook-news-feed/index.html

By Heather Kelly, CNN updated 7:34 PM EST, Thu March 7, 2013 | Filed under: Social Media

The biggest new feature in the news feed is the option to filter posts by category. Users can view only updates from friends or the latest from the pages they follow.

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Facebook has redesigned the news feed to fill more of the main page
• Web version of Facebook will look much more like the mobile app
• New categories have been added for music and photos
• Update will begin rolling out Thursday; revised apps are coming in the next few weeks

(CNN) -- Facebook wants to cut clutter.

The social media site, which has more than 1 billion users, on Thursday announced a newly redesigned news feed that blows up photos and visual content, and adds categories that focus on specific types of content. The Web version of the social network now looks much more like the mobile apps, which are also getting a revamping.

Facebook announced the changes during a media event at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. The new Web version will roll out slowly to users starting Thursday, and updated iOS and Android apps will be available in the coming weeks.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg compared the revamped feed to a local newspaper and the new channels to the traditional sections, such as sports and business, you'd find there.

Facebook unveils redesigned news feed

"I think that there's this important and social place in this world for this customized newspaper," Zuckerberg said.

He didn't note the irony of comparing Facebook to an industry that his site and others are marginalizing.

The news feed is the first, and sometimes only, page people see when they log on to the Facebook website or fire up a Facebook mobile app. The nerve center of the Facebook experience, the news feed fills the middle of this home screen with updates, photos, articles and other content and activity from your friends, such as likes and app updates. Interspersed among that somewhat-chronological content are posts from pages you follow and targeted ads.

The main page, which Facebook is calling the "front page" to go with its newspaper metaphor, is adding categories so people can look at a more narrow feed of specific types of content as an alternative to the all-in-one view. There are views for all friends, most recent, close friends, music, photos, games and following.

Photos will show every single image your friends post as well as the photos posted by the pages you follow, including anything shared to Facebook from Instagram. The music channel will show a combination of nearby concerts, feeds from musicians you follow and the songs friends are listing to with third-party apps such as Spotify. The channels will appear on the mobile apps and Web versions of Facebook.

"Everyone's going to start on the front page like they do today. This just gives people more power to dig into the topics they care about," Zuckerberg said.

The individual elements that populate the news feed have been redesigned to fill the page better, the company maintains. Text is taking a back seat to visual content, which now makes up almost 30% of the content in the news feed, according to Zuckerberg. Photos, videos and albums are bigger. Shared articles show a bigger image and larger summary along with a logo for the publisher. Content in the feed about individuals and pages will show a little slice of their timeline, including their cover photo and a button to add them as a friend or to like the page. Maps and posts for third-party apps such as Pinterest have also been cleaned up.

Previously, the news feed occupied less than 40% of the real estate on the Facebook home page, according to Julie Zhuo, Facebook's director of design. To cut down on clutter and give the feed more room to breathe, navigation elements on the left have been slimmed down to a narrow black column of icons, similar to the mobile interface.

One thing that's not changing is the algorithm that decides what posts are displayed in a feed, which has received some criticism. Zuckerberg defended the practice of not showing a full and complete chronological feed of all content, saying people benefit from more important content, such as major life events, being given a more prominent place in their feeds.

The filters might be great for users, but they could have a negative effect on companies that have sunk money into promoting their pages and gathering fans, said one analyst. Those fans can switch to a more narrow feed of just their friends (or music content or photos) that doesn't include brand pages, potentially making it more difficult for companies to reach their followers.

"It's going to continue to erode the value of companies having Facebook pages and fans," said Forrester analyst Nate Elliott. "Facebook is walking a really fine line, they're not providing enough value."

Ads will still be featured on the friends-only feeds, so companies and brands that want to reach people who switch to those views can by buying advertising from Facebook. Elliot says this could be interpreted as a "bait and switch" by marketers.

Ads -- which are included in the redesign -- are Facebook's primary source of income. The company made $4.2 billion off advertising in 2012, which accounted for 82% of the social network's total revenue, according to Engadget. Most of that ad money comes from the Web version of Facebook, and 23% was from ads on mobile devices.

The company may get money from advertisers, but it needs to keep the users who click on those ads engaged, active and happy on the network.

Facebook Updates News Feed With Dedicated Feeds, Bigger Photos

http://readwrite.com/2013/03/07/facebook-updates-news-feed-with-dedicated-feeds-more-photos

Mark Hachman March 7th, 2013

Facebook rolled out an updated News Feed on Thursday, aiming to provide a "personalized newspaper" featuring updates both from friends and selected news sources.
The new News Feed will be slowly rolled out to users over the next few weeks. (To get it early, click this link to join the waiting list.)

Photos Take Prominence

The new News Feed look steals ideas from Facebook's mobile apps, which have focused on prominently showcasing photos. To that, Facebook has added a bevy of new feeds, or ways of displaying updates on your page. These include distinct feeds for music, photos, games, updates from "close friends," and those from people and Pages you follow.
Facebook also lifted the left-hand nav bar from its mobile application and added it to the Facebook desktop, so that people won't have to navigate back through the Facebook home page to move through the site.
"News Feed is one of the most important services that we've built," Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said at an event at its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters. "It take all the things that your friends are doing and puts them all in one place."
Probably the most important updates that friends share within the News Feed are photos, Facebook executives said. Zuckerberg said that about half of the average News Feed consists of photos, which will be displayed in a larger format, along with albums. That, unfortunately, will now also include image-driven ads.

The larger photos will help eliminate some of the unusable space that dominates the page. Julie Zhuo, the director of design for Facebook, said that less than 40 percent of the current Facebook page is taken up by the News Feed design. "The rest, quite frankly, is clutter," she said.

Facebook's "Sports Pages"

One of the recurring themes of the Facebook presentation was that users should be encouraged and be able to look for specific subject-specific feeds — something the company has quietly done before, but always suppressed behind the main feed. It's the Facebook equivalent of a traditional newspaper's sections, which could include business or sports. Within the News Feed, these will be organized into topical feeds — with, presumably more to come.
"We believe that the best personalized newspaper should drill into any topic that you want to discuss," Zuckerberg said. "And it should let you drill down into the one topic that you want."
Feeds showcasing Photos, Music, and the other content categories will be organized chronologically, in an attempt to push as much relevant material in front of Facebook users as possible. The Music feed will show what users are listening to on Spotify, what artist pages they like, and what concerts are playing nearby or in the near future. Facebook didn't go into what the Games feed would include, but presumably there will be frequent updates by apps from Zynga and its competitors.

Still, the main News Feed should retain the same mix of updates it always has, pushed by Facebook's Social Graph algorithms. Chris Cox, the director of product for Facebook, said that Facebook hadn't changed anything about its ranking algorithms for those updates.

Facebook has also come under fire for allegedly suppressing updates that wasn't promoted in the News Feed. Earlier this week, Nick Bilton of the New York Times essentially accused Facebook of encouraging a pay-to-play scheme. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also said he had been encouraged to pay Facebook to increase the number of people who would see his posts.
Facebook denied the charges, saying its algorithms have made recent attempts to focus more on higher-quality stories, and that engagement was actually up for social media figures with more than 10,000 followers.

Tags:

• Facebook

What To Expect From Facebook's Shiny New News Feed

http://readwrite.com/2013/03/01/facebook-will-unveil-a-new-news-feed-on-march-7

Taylor Hatmaker March 1st, 2013

News Feed, one of the three so-called "pillars" of Facebook - alongside Timeline and Graph Search - is the bustling epicenter of the social network. And it's overdue for an overhaul.
In a press invite sent out Friday, Facebook invited us to "Come see a new look for News Feed" on the morning of Thursday, March 7, at the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.

 

News Feed Needs Some Spring Cleaning 

At turns maddening, cluttered and ad-ridden, News Feed is the core of the Facebook social experience. If you click the "Home" button that's where you'll land - and it's certainly where Facebook wants its users to hang out.
Facebook's real-time, algorithm-driven, social ticker is also what makes the social network so confoundingly addictive: When did my college roommate get hitched? Why can't I stop reading about people I haven't spoken to in years and barely knew to begin with?
While Facebook obviously has the hyper-engaged can't-peel-your-eyes-away aspect of News Feed on lock, it's still a confusing, busy page. Managing who and what shows up on News Feed remains a Sisyphean grind.
The News Feed redesign is likely to remove some of the micro-managing necessary to maintain a relevant social stream. Facebook might also rethink the formula that determines what shows up in the News Feed - but better, more centralized controls for sorting and hiding content would also be a good idea.

A (Literal) Stream Of Revenue

The cunningly engineered sense of addictive voyeurism is what powers News Feed - and what drives advertising revenue straight into Facebook's pocket. In the fourth quarter of 2012, Facebook raked in $1.33 billion in advertising revenue - a 41% leap.

The last time Facebook changed News Feed in a major way was back in September 2011, though it aggressively tinkers around with all of its features on a rolling basis.

We know Facebook is playing around with a cleaner, more image-centric Timeline design, so it's possible that the News Feed revamp could follow suit. Rumors are also afloat that a very visual redesign for the mobile News Feed is on the way - and with Facebook's mobile mindedness, we'd expect some news on that front too.
We won't know what the company has up its sleeve for certain until March 7, but we can cling to one certainty - it's not going to be a Facebook phone.
Image by Taylor Hatmaker.

How To Take Back Social Media Marketing From Facebook & Twitter

http://readwrite.com/2013/02/15/how-why-to-take-back-social-media-marketing-from-facebook-twitter

Rob Tarkoff February 15th, 2013

Guest author Rob Tarkoff is the president and CEO of Lithium Technologies.
It's 2013. Social media is no longer new. It's a mature medium, one that has been woven into the fabric of consumer life online. So why are brands still determined to act like naive tourists, blundering around a foreign land and upsetting the natives? It's time to take back control.
Brands have been lectured for the last few years on the need to let go of the vice-like grip on their brand, to hand over control to their customers in social media. And it's true that social media has ushered in a new age of transparency, where customers want a far greater stake in any brand they interact with.
But this doesn't mean you can shrug your shoulders and simply launch your brand unguided onto a social network. In fact, it's your responsibility to guide your customers' social experience. And that means welcoming them back to your home online.
Almost all of the most embarrassing recent social media blunders took place on Facebook and Twitter; which offer brands little control over their campaigns or messaging.

Forget Likes, Fans & Followers

It's frankly shameful so many brands are still asking social media to deliver likes, fans, followers, views and channel performance indicators, not business results.
Forward-thinking brands ask social media to deliver things that make business sense. Things like higher customer satisfaction, greater loyalty, reduced support costs and increased revenue.
Social media can be a game-changer, but only when we get serious about the social customer experiences. It's really not that difficult.
First, we must face the facts about social networks like Facebook - they just don't constitute a viable social media strategy. They're almost certainly not where you want to make your home. Only .5% of fans ever mention the brands they like on Facebook and just 2% of fans return to Facebook brand pages a second time.
If you really want to engage with your customers on social channels, you need to engage on your own social hubs: customer forums, blogs and communities.
When cosmetics retailer Sephora realized it had little ability to truly engage its nearly 1 million Facebook fans, for example, the company built its own social hub, Beauty Talk. Sephora now has the ability to engage and enlist their social customers to participate - and Beauty Talk members spend 10x more than the average customer.
Driving this kind of outcome is simply not possible on Facebook.

Social Media Is Not A Silo

Today, only a shocking 11% of companies say their social strategy is guided by insights from other business groups. This means 89% of social strategy happens in a silo. To drive social customer experience to the strategic level, it's essential to get others involved - across marketing, support and sales.
Next, stop playing. Experimentation is great. Endless experimentation is not. Make social engagement a core part of how you interact with your customers. Some 63% of consumers now search for help from other customers online. For example, Hewlett Packard has saved $50 million since launching its social support solution.

Measure What's Important

Now, start measuring the actual impact of your social media strategy. Ban the pointless hunt for buzz, likes, comments, high fives - what do they really mean for your business?

Instead, move to the same metrics you apply to any other area of your business, like reduced costs, greater satisfaction and increased revenue.
Once you have these foundations in place, it's time to scale. A single Twitter campaign can create an ocean of comments. How do you deal with that flood? By enabling your social customers to help each other. Skype community members help more than 3 million customers per month and resolve 70% of cases on first contact. Hewlett Packard's social customers handle 20% of the company's global support.
With nearly 1.5 billion people using online social networks today, social media can no longer remain an afterthought - a sandbox for dabbling. Brands need to treat their social media investment as a core part of their long-term business transformation, not as a specific activity that you want to check off the list. Anything less just isn't serious.

Most Facebook Users Have Quit For At Least A Few Weeks

http://readwrite.com/2013/02/05/facebook-pew-research-december-2012

Taylor Hatmaker yesterday

It looks like we're not the only ones unplugging from Facebook. According to new data published on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, 61% of current Facebook users have taken a break from the infamously addictive social network. The telephone survey culled its data from a sample of 1,006 adults in the U.S in December 2012.
Some more interesting tidbits about these Facebook comings and goings:

• 67% of online Americans are Facebook users
• 8% of online adults who do not currently use Facebook are interested in becoming Facebook users in the future.
• 20% of the online adults who don't currently use Facebook say that they used to use the site.
• 8% of the 61% of users admitted to taking a break from Facebook due to to concerns that they were spending too much time on the site.
• 21% of those users said that their break from Facebook was the result of being busy and not having time to spend on the site.
• 28% of Facebook users say the site has become less important to them than it was a year ago. 
• Only 3% of Facebook users say they plan to spend more time on Facebook in the coming year.
• 27% of Facebook users say they plan to spend less time on the social network in the next year. (Good luck with that!)
• Some 38% of Facebook users ages 18-29 expect to spend less time using the site in 2013.
• 92% of people who use social networking sites maintain a Facebook profile.

Pew also includes a funny little selection of comments in which people explain their Facebook breaks. Justifications include everything from “Too much drama" to “I gave it up for Lent.” Fair enough.
The big finding here is that almost two-thirds of Facebook users have taken a break from the site. Facebook owns an insane amount of engagement, especially on mobile devices. But the majority of its users have been compelled to step back, voluntarily taking a break from the social network for a period of at least several weeks. Is the social network suffering from dangerous levels of user fatigue?
But of course, while only 3% of users plan to spend more time on Facebook in 2013 than in 2012, the majority of Facebook users will likely maintain or increase the time they spend on the site as the company figures out new ways to become even stickier with its huge user base.
Have you considered taking a Facebook break? Have you pulled it off?
We're in the process. One day at a time, right?
Image by ReadWrite

Why I Decided To Leave Facebook

Ready to take those empty threats to the next level?
You and me both. Right now, a ton of people I know (plenty of RW staffers among them) are at the digital breaking point. It's why we have ReadWrite Pause. It's why we occasionally totally freak out and take a harsh light to the virtual habits that increasingly dictate the course of day to day life, our moods and even our subjective experience of happiness.

Something's Gotta Give

In a moment of clarity two nights ago, I decided to carve out the biggest timesuck/brainsuck/sanitysuck that I could identify, or the one with the least everyday returns: Facebook. Yesterday afternoon I archived all of my data and I pulled the trigger.
Don't get me wrong, as much as I criticize it (and think doing so is absolutely necessary for an entity with so much power and reach), Facebook is an amazing tool for connecting and reconnecting with. Yet it does reel us into compulsive web habits, the likes of which I'm trying to break. Even my friends who never appear to be active on the site admit to spending hours trawling their News Feeds every day in stealth-mode. We creep and like and share and tag and ... I'm just not sure what it all adds up to. It feels like increasingly less than the sum of its parts.

On Facebook Since Day 1

I joined Facebook in the spring of 2004 as user #806,469. I've used it pretty steadily with only occasional lapses since the day I signed up. Then I used it to meet people I didn't know before I moved to New York to go to college. Now I almost exclusively use it to find and discover local events, concerts, cool talks, parties and the like, and to collect the photos I take of my friends.
Really?

An Experiment In Subtraction

I disabled my account a) to see how long I can go; and b) how it affects my digital and non-digital life. My friends and community are really active about Facebook Events, so I imagine it'll be a bit more of an analog effort to know what's going on. But if I like the tranquility of a non-Facebook addicted life enough, maybe I'll stick with it awhile. Maybe I'll do the same thing with Twitter, though that one is the real necessity in this whole tech blogging line of work thing. (Or maybe it just feels like one.)
I didn't go nuclear. I just deactivated my account, rather than deleting it. I've been on Facebook for so long I'm going to have to work up to that bit if I go that far. For the record, since I report on Facebook constantly, I have another dummy account that I use to test new features. I won't be using that one to sneak in any News Feed time, though. Stay tuned to see what happens, and if I'll spend my entire weekend inside as a social pariah with a Netflix account.


http://readwrite.com/2013/02/04/how-to-quit-facebook

Taylor Hatmaker posted 6 hours ago

How To Backup Your Facebook Data In 5 Easy Steps

Taylor Hatmaker posted 5 hours ago

Ready to take a break from Facebook, or just want a nice local backup of all the data you've uploaded to Facebook over the years?
Turns out that downloading your stuff from Facebook is a lot easier than it used to be. Even for someone like me, who's uploaded a massive amount of data over the years.

As Facebook user #806469, I was among the first million people to join the service, and I've used it pretty steadily since the spring of 2004 - accumulating more and more history all the time. Perhaps most importantly, I've uploaded 4,186 photos to date, and I want to make sure I keep every one of them. Downloading all my contacts would be nice too, though Facebook doesn't make that easy.
Backing up everything else was surprisingly straightforward, however, using Facebook's built-in archival tools.

5 Steps To Backing Up Facebook

Step 1. Click the little gear icon in the upper right corner and navigate to Account Settings.
Step 2. Figure out what you're after. You can download the primary copy of your user data or you can choose to download an "expanded archive.. The latter is an interesting, more technical glimpse at your Facebook activity over time (shown below). Facebook has a nice guide that breaks down what you'll find where. I downloaded both, because, well, why not?

Step 3.  Input your password to start downloading a copy of your information. Amazingly, my download was only 350MB, and considering how many photos I have stored, I imagine that's on the (very) high end compared to most Facebook users.

Step 4. Pore over your data! You'll get a folder with your user name that you can explore. It has two main subfolders: html and photos. The first one - html - is where all of your archived messages, likes, wall posts and everything else shows up. In the "friends" file you might be able to find some of your Facebook friends' email addresses included to the right. There's also an html version of your photo albums in here. The second main folder is a very nicely packaged directory of all of your photos in .jpeg form.

Step 5. If you opted to download the expanded archive, you'll have even more weird stuff to check out. Try the deleted friends folder for starters. The pokes folder is predictably also a good time stroll down memory lane.

All told, this process is way easier than I thought it would be. And I'm still kind of amazed that the export tool hands over all of your photos in .jpeg form.

Contact Information Is The Sticking Point

Unfortunately, Facebook keeps an iron grip on the email addresses and phone numbers of your Facebook friends. Considering those would be a pretty handy way to cut out the big blue social network altogether, it makes sense from Zuckerberg's perspective, but it's still annoying. There used to be a workaround involving Yahoo Mail that's since been patched, so if you know of any good, safe and legal ways to extract your contacts from Facebook, do tell in the comments.
That's it.
Backing up your Facebook data is a good idea whether you have plans to delete your Facebook account, want to take a break or just want a little peace of mind by having all your Facebook data at hand. Best of all, a process that used to involve way more identity confirmation and often third-party browser plugins and the like is amazingly easy these days.

http://readwrite.com/2013/02/01/how-to-backup-your-facebook-data-in-5-easy-steps

Infographic: Mobile Users Spend More Time on Facebook than Google

Infographic: Mobile Users Spend More Time on Facebook than Google

Why Facebook Advertisers Spend More on Mobile

Why Facebook Advertisers Spend More on Mobile

Facebook plans to add TV-like commercials to News Feed | VentureBeat

Facebook plans to add TV-like commercials to News Feed | VentureBeat

http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/18/facebook-video-ads/

The DeanBeat: The accelerated change of the game industry | VentureBeat

The DeanBeat: The accelerated change of the game industry | VentureBeat

http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/14/the-deanbeat-the-accelerated-change-of-the-game-industry/