Previously, teens using Facebook were only able to share content with friends, friends of friends and custom groups like “family.” Now, they can choose to share posts to anyone on Facebook, just like users 18 and older.

“Teens are among the savviest people using of social media, and whether it comes to civic engagement, activism, or their thoughts on a new movie, they want to be heard,” Facebook wrote in a blog post. “While only a small fraction of teens using Facebook might choose to post publicly, this update now gives them the choice to share more broadly, just like on other social media services.”

Any teenager wishing to share a status update or post publicly must first manually change the audience setting on his post to “public” before sharing. After doing so, a pop-up explains that the post will be visible to everyone on the site. The post will go live once the user clicks “ok” on this pop-up box, acknowledging he has seen the warning and intends to share publicly.

Facebook’s audience settings remain unchanged from post to post for all users, including teens. For example, if a user shares a post publicly, the audience setting will remain on “public” for the user’s next post. For teens, a second reminder message will pop up if they choose to post publicly the next time around.

Teenagers can also change settings to allow non-friends to follow public posts. Users who choose to follow a teenager will be able to see these public posts, with the exception of posts that have not been shared with them. Teenagers will not be followable automatically, and will need to manually update their settings to enable follows.

A new teenager who join Facebook will have his audience settings automatically set to “friends,” and will need to manually change that setting in order to share with the public.

Wednesday’s update will not impact existing Facebook posts from teens, and it won’t automatically change the audience for any future posts. That must be done manually. The update simply gives teenagers the ability to share publicly, just as they can on other social sites like Twitter.

The new update will begin rolling out slowly to all users starting Wednesday afternoon.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

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The latest update for the Android Facebook app adds the ability to “edit your posts and comments and tap to see all your changes.” However, the editing has not been enabled on any of the Android devices we experimented with.

The editing feature will roll out to Facebook users on the web and Android devices over the next day, Facebook confirmed to Mashable. The editing feature is not included in the latest iOS app, but will likely get pushed out in the next update. Users will see the option to “Edit Post” when they click on the drop-down arrow in the top-right corner of a post.

Editing posts was potentially dicey territory for Facebook, since the it brings the danger of a bait-and-switch with followers. A user could conceivably write, “Who likes ice cream?” and get hundreds of Likes and affirming comments, then edit the post to read, “Who wants to beat up some cats?”

Facebook addresses this issue by marking the post as edited and letting users access the history of any edited post with a click. Google+, which has let users edit posts for some time, works in a similar fashion.

Facebook has been slowly granting users more editing capabilities over their content. Users can edit photo captions (that is, status updates with a photo attached) and the ability to edit comments arrived a few months ago.

It’s likely Facebook examined all the potential abuses and concluded the risk in letting users alter posts was minimal. It makes sense: Any user who would mislead followers or friends with a post they intend to maliciously edit would likely soon find themselves with few followers or friends of any value.

For journalists on Facebook, the value of editing posts is even greater. As Mashable’s Emily Banks has argued, being able to edit a post in a transparent fashion makes Facebook posts more like articles on a website, and now reporters will be able to make corrections without deleting entire updates and losing conversation threads.

What’s your take on editing posts: Yea or nay? Have your say in the comments.

Image: Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images

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The decision (.PDF) to consider a Facebook “Like” as protected speech may set a precedent of how courts apply freedom of speech rules to users’ online activities.

For the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va,, Liking a candidate on Facebook should have the same protections as real-life actions that show political support.

“Liking a political candidate’s campaign page communicates the user’s approval of the candidate and supports the campaign by associating the user with it,” wrote Judge William Traxler, who authored the opinion. “It is the Internet equivalent of displaying a political sign in one’s front yard, which the Supreme Court has held is substantive speech.”

The case hinged over whether B.J. Roberts, the sheriff of Hampton, Va., illegally fired six of his employees who supported Jim Adams, his opponent in the sheriff’s elections. One of the employees, Former Deputy Sheriff Daniel Ray Carter, had Liked the Facebook page of his boss’ political opponent.

Facebook, the fired employees and the American Civil Liberties Union argued that a Facebook Like must be considered free speech. This would mean that an employer cannot legally fire his or her employees for expressing opinions on the social network. an employer cannot legally fire his or her employees for expressing opinions on the social network.

The federal district judge who first ruled on the issue decided that a Facebook Like was “insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection.” For the judge, a Facebook Like didn’t involve an “actual statement,” unlike Facebook posts, which have been granted constitutional protection in other legal cases.

Today, Judge Traxler disagreed.

“On the most basic level, clicking on the ‘like’ button literally causes to be published the statement that the User ‘likes’ something, which is itself a substantive statement,” he wrote.

“We are pleased the court recognized that a Facebook ‘Like’ is protected by the First Amendment,” read an emailed statement by Pankaj Venugopal, Facebook’s associate general counsel.

The ACLU applauded the decision as well. “This ruling rightly recognizes that the First Amendment protects free speech regardless of the venue, whether a sentiment is expressed in the physical world or online. The Constitution doesn’t distinguish between ‘liking’ a candidate on Facebook and supporting him in a town meeting or public rally,” said Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project in an emailed statement.

The ruling reinstated the claims of Carter and two other fired employees. If they win the case, they may get their jobs back.

Do you agree with this decision? Should the First Amendment protect Facebook Likes?

Image: Photo by Stephen Lam/Getty Images

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The company is currently selling a shade of nail polish, “social butterfly blue” at its campus store in Menlo Park, Calif. Although Facebook told Mashable it added the polish to its collection of branded swag at the beginning of the year, its existence was recently brought to light by Huffington Post executive tech editor Bianca Bosker, who tweeted a picture of it on sale at the headquarters’ store.

You won’t find the Facebook logo on the packaging, though. Instead, it’s decorated with a small icon of a butterfly.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to visit the shop in person to pick up your Facebook blue polish; no online orders are available. Each bottle costs $4.95.

Image: Mashable composite; images: iStockphoto, gawriloff; Facebook

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Kenshoo Social, a digital marketing company that works with “hundreds” of customers that advertise on Facebook, explored more than 75 billion Facebook ads over the past two quarters, finding evidence that the ads are not only working, but are in some cases undervalued. Kenshoo is considered a preferred marketing developer (PMD), meaning the company has been uniquely identified by Facebook as a marketer “driving outstanding positive impact.” In other words, Kenshoo and Facebook work closely together to ensure ad success for both companies.

Facebook advertisers who work with Kenshoo, including brands like Sears, Ticketmaster and CareerBuilder, reportedly saw an 18.5% increase in click through rates in Q2 over Q1, and revenues driven by Facebook ads were up nearly 30%. Click rates increased 16% and user interactions with the ads — likes, shares or comments — also increased by 57%. The research is not indicative of all Facebook advertisers — only those Kenshoo works with — but with 75 billion ads in the sample, it does offer a snapshot of Facebook ad performance.

Even with ad metrics up, advertisers using “last click conversion” attributions — that is, giving the ad credit only if a sale is directly from a user click on Facebook — actually undervalue Facebook ads by 30%, according to Aaron Goldman, the CMO of Kenshoo. This does not give the ad credit in scenarios in which users view an ad and then make a purchase at a later date, still driven by the ad but not immediately from Facebook.

Kenshoo isn’t the only marketing company to claim social media ads are undervalued. Monetate, which offers cloud-based marketing technology to customers, described a similar trend in its Q1 ecommerce quarterly report earlier this year. The report pointed to the “stickiness” of social media as a reason click through rates aren’t higher; users don’t want to leave the page so they store the ad information in their head for later use.

Facebook’s apparent increase in ad success can be attributed to two factors, Goldman said. First, advertisers are getting better at narrowing down their target audiences and honing in more appropriately on users who may find the ad engaging. Plus, Facebook’s algorithm is improving, meaning the site can better pinpoint relevant users within an advertiser’s target audience.

Ampush, another Strategic PMD who works with dozens of companies advertising on Facebook, is also seeing increases in user ad engagement. For Ampush, mobile use and the increase of page post ads and mobile app install ads has been another major driving factor. “The overall growth in mobile has definitely correlated and contributed to the overall trend towards improved ad metrics overall for Facebook,” says Chris Amos, Ampush co-founder and CMO.

A separate recent study by Salesforce Marketing Cloud explored Facebook’s ad performance over the first three months of the year, noting a major difference in ad performance based on region. Both Europe and Asia-Pacific saw substantially higher click through rates on ads than the Americas, with Asia-Pacific more than 60% above the global average. Salesforce, a third Strategic PMD, has not yet released its finding from Facebook’s Q2, and a spokesperson declined to comment on whether or not Salesforce saw increases similar to Kenshoo and Ampush.

Image: Kim White/Getty Images

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This is the gist of new research from the cloud marketing technology firm Unified Social. Jeff Widman, the director of research there, recently crunched some numbers and found that posts that were sponsored in the first 24 hours received 2.6 times more viral impressions and 2.7 times more viral engagements than older promoted posts.

EdgeRank looks at story’s momentum to determine the number of people exposed to the post. In other words, it attempts to sense virality and then helps it along. A paid update amplifies that initial impact, making it seem more viral and thus receiving better treatment from EdgeRank.

While it seems like common sense for brands to promote only their freshest posts, Widman said this is often not the case. Such posts are often handled by an outside agency that “doesn’t come back for a couple of days or a week or more,” he said.

However, Widman added that in order to get the most out of EdgeRank, Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, you need to build on a post’s momentum once it hits the first time.

One caveat about Widman’s research: He examined a seemingly very small sample, just three unnamed brands over a one-week period. While Widman agrees that “it’s certainly not billions” of data points, it’s more about the money spent and the impressions than the number of posts. Despite the small sample size, Widman said he stands by the research. “It makes sense intuitively,” he said.

Image: Andreas Ivarsson

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