David Marcus will lead Facebook’s messaging items, the organization proclaimed in a press release on this Monday.

Marcus confirmed the move with a post to Facebook, which could be found in its whole at the lowest part of this post.

“While I was amidst my manner of thinking about what was next for me, Mark Zuckerberg and I got together. Imprint imparted a forcing vision about portable informing,” Marcus composed. “At the outset, I didn’t know whether an alternate huge organization gig was a decent thing for me, yet Mark’s excitement, and the unparalleled range and customer engagement of the Facebook stage eventually won me over.”

Facebook made a sprinkle in the informing scene with its $19 billion acquisition of Whatsapp. The organization additionally published on Monday the dispatch of Slingshot, its new informing application that has comparable usefulness to Snapchat.

The capability to connect cash to messages is seen as a real method for creating money out of the prevalent informing business. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said after the Whatsapp obtaining that he doesn’t see promoting as see adds as the best approach to adapt informing.

Whatsapp will purportedly not be under Marcus and keep on operaing freely.

The Financial Times reported in April that Facebook was preparing an online payments framework that would first introduced in Ireland and crosswise over Europe.

Facebook right now considers in-application installments in the U.s. In 2011, the informal community endeavored to kickstart its own particular cash with Facebook Credits, yet shut the project.

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But Zuckerberg also knows you could be reading Facebook more in any given day. What about those times when you’re just skimming the app during a spare minute? What if you don’t have time to read any of those fascinating links?

If you’ve ever gone hunting through your feed for an article you saw earlier, you’ll welcome the news that Facebook appears to be testing a “save for later” feature. This isn’t the first time the company has tested the idea, but it does appear to be more advanced and closer to wide release.

The concept first cropped up on a version of the Facebook app for iPhone and iPad in 2012. In that iteration, you held your finger on a story to save it to a separate list. Now, according to the blog MyTechSkool, which first spotted it, users will see a button with a bookmark icon they can press.

This is what apps such as Instapaper, Pocket and Read It Later have been doing for years, of course. The Apple browser, Safari, added a similar feature called Reading List (available on mobile in iOS6 and on the desktop with Mac OS X Mavericks).

But the Facebook feature differs in significant ways. First of all, you can save more than just articles — in theory, you’ll be able to set aside anything from your cousin’s holiday snaps to a change in your secret crush’s relationship status. Call it a social To Do list.

Secondly, it allows you to do your later reading within Facebook — meaning Zuckerberg gets to monitor and monetize ever more of your reading behavior. What we don’t know yet: whether you’ll be able to read those articles, links and saved social snippets when you’re offline.

We’ve reached out to Facebook to find out when the company intends to roll this out to all users. In the meantime, let us know in the comments below whether you see the Saved feature yet.

[via AllthingsD]

Image: Stephen Lam, Getty Images News

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The study, published by the Pew Research Center on Thursday, found that almost half of American users click on news in their Facebook feeds. Since 64% of adults in the United States use Facebook, that means one in three Americans consumes news on Facebook.

However, only 22% of the 30% who get their news on Facebook think the site is a useful source for information about the world, and only 4% of those think Facebook is “the most important way” to get their news.

“People go to Facebook to share personal moments — and they discover the news almost incidentally,” Amy Mitchell, Pew Research Center’s director of journalism research, said in a statement. “The serendipitous nature of news on Facebook may actually increase its importance as a source of news and information, especially among those who do not follow the news closely.”

The study quotes one respondent, who said he believes “Facebook is a good way to find out news without actually looking for it.”

The importance of the social network also depends on how much of a news junkie the user is.

Among those who click on news links in their Facebook news feeds, just 38% of heavy news followers think the social network is “an important way to get the news,” but among those who follow news “less often,” 47% consider Facebook as an important source.

On Monday, Facebook announced that it was driving 170% more traffic to media sites this year than in 2012.

This is the first of a series of studies on social media and news published by Pew in collaboration with the Knight Foundation. For this study, Pew surveyed 5,173 Americans ages 18 and older. You can read the full report here (.PDF).

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

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Trying to update your status will yield this message: “There was a problem updating your status. Please try again in a few minutes.”

Facebook status update issues are not uncommon, but this one seems global — we’ve tested it from several IPs and received the same message.

According to web service status tracker Downrightnow, Facebook is likely experiencing a service disruption.

Facebook did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

This story is developing…

Image: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images, Facebook

The post Facebook Suffers Sitewide Errors for Many Users – Digital News appeared first on Digitrock.

Nanigans is one of Facebook’s largest ad buyers specifically focusing on retail advertising. According to the company (via VentureBeat), iOS-based ads have shown a surprisingly high click through rate:

“Retailers are realizing significantly greater return from audiences on iOS than audiences on Android,” the report says. “For the first three quarters of 2013, RPC [revenue per click] on iOS averaged 6.1 times higher than Android and ROI [return on investment] on iOS averaged 17.9 times higher than Android.”

“Audiences cost more on iPhone, and the reason is that it’s worth it,” Slagen said. “Typically, we’re not looking to acquire one-time customers, we’re looking to invest over time … so we pay more up front for better long-term results.”

The graph above shows retailers’ return on investment for Facebook mobile advertising. It’s definitely an interesting study considering that Facebook seems to be deeply integrated with Android. It’s also important to note that these results will vary across different industries.

According to VentureBeat, Nanigans SVP Dan Slagen said that this data is very different when looking at the gaming or e-commerce industries, but when it comes to retail, iOS is the clear winner. Apparently, iOS users click on ads and buy more merchandise than Android users. Could it be that the mobile shopping experience across various sites caters to iOS devices over Android devices?

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

Image: Flickr, Simon Q

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Nanigans is one of Facebook’s largest ad buyers specifically focusing on retail advertising. According to the company (via VentureBeat), iOS-based ads have shown a surprisingly high click through rate:

“Retailers are realizing significantly greater return from audiences on iOS than audiences on Android,” the report says. “For the first three quarters of 2013, RPC [revenue per click] on iOS averaged 6.1 times higher than Android and ROI [return on investment] on iOS averaged 17.9 times higher than Android.”

“Audiences cost more on iPhone, and the reason is that it’s worth it,” Slagen said. “Typically, we’re not looking to acquire one-time customers, we’re looking to invest over time … so we pay more up front for better long-term results.”

The graph above shows retailers’ return on investment for Facebook mobile advertising. It’s definitely an interesting study considering that Facebook seems to be deeply integrated with Android. It’s also important to note that these results will vary across different industries.

According to VentureBeat, Nanigans SVP Dan Slagen said that this data is very different when looking at the gaming or e-commerce industries, but when it comes to retail, iOS is the clear winner. Apparently, iOS users click on ads and buy more merchandise than Android users. Could it be that the mobile shopping experience across various sites caters to iOS devices over Android devices?

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

Image: Flickr, Simon Q

The post Facebook Ads Are 1,790% More Profitable on iOS Than Android appeared first on Digitrock.

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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A lack of interaction tells the tale. Clearly you paid good money to expose lots of people to this particular piece of content, but most gave it little mind.

That doesn’t have to be the case. There are people who do nothing but study the performance of social advertising all day. We talked to some and gleaned a few insights. If you want to run an ad with a halfway decent chance of getting a social lift, check out these pro tips.

1. Think About Who You Are Targeting

While we’ve established that an ad with no Likes is an embarrassing failure, it’s also true that an ad with a lot of interaction from the wrong people is a waste of pixels. Lucky for you, Twitter and Facebook both have sophisticated turnkey programs that let you target users by demographic, location and affinities, among other variables.

For instance, say you wanted to target all the feta cheese fans in New Jersey. Facebook lets you do just that.

As Peter Goodman, VP of Social.com at Salesforce.com, notes, a successful social media ad program relies on good customer data. Who is really buying your products? What are they interested in? “You really need to start to think more deeply about these amazing targeting features,” he says. “Concentrate on the demo you know are going to work and then build that out to scale.”

How to do that? Back in March, Facebook released Lookalike Audiences, a program that uses Facebook’s data to identify people who aren’t currently fans of your site, but who have similar characteristics to your fans.

2. Not Every Ad Has to Be Social

Take a look at most advertising you see. Is it something you would want to pass on to a friend? No. That’s because most ads are not entertaining in themselves, but are either formulated to propose a call to action or as a branding exercise. “If you think of the typical ad with the shot of the car driving on the mountain against the sunset, there’s nothing particularly social about it,” says David Berkowitz, CMO of the marketing agency MRY. “You have to consider if there’s anything social about it.”

There doesn’t have to be. A very targeted ad with a call to action will be social because people seeing the ad are in the market for the product or service. Similarly, a branding ad might go over well with rabid fans of the brand.

Jimmy Kimmel notwithstanding, creating a viral video, though, is nearly impossible Berkowitz says. Jim Squires, director of ad product marketing at Facebook, says that video probably wouldn’t do much for your business anyway. “Stay on point,” he says. “Funny cat videos may pull likes, but they won’t help you achieve a business objective. Make sure you’re crisp on the business objective — as you would be for any ad campaign — and create content that is relevant and supports your story.”

3. Social Ads Don’t Have to Look Like Ads

Facebook’s Promoted Posts and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets look more like communication with consumers than ads. That’s by design. The top social networks are pushing a native advertising experience, which translates roughly to branded content.

“Take the time to do great creative — asset planning and creation is often overlooked for this new medium,” says Squires. “Sharing thoughtful, timely, iconic pieces is important, since it’s being seen alongside compelling content from friends and family.” At Facebook, they call these interactions “stories.” Squires says marketers should think of them the same way: “Tell stories –- people remember stories, not facts.”

Sometimes social ads don’t even need to be ads. Berkowitz points to the Audi Instagram feed as an instance of non-advertising advertising. “Almost every image has an Audi logo in it,” he says. “And there are thousands of interactions with each post.”

4. Optimize for Mobile

Obviously, a desktop-first model for advertising won’t work in a world in which Facebook’s mobile ad revenues are on track to supplant its take from desktop. How do you make sure your ad works as well on a phone or tablet as it does on the web? Says Squire: “Make sure posts are succinct — your key point should be made in the first 90 characters — and ensure that any photo or video works well on mobile.

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

Image: Red Bull, Facebook

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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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