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).

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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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Each video will play silently and can be viewed with sound upon clicking.

The new capability will only be rolled out a small group of random users, and videos will only play automatically if they are uploaded directly to Facebook — not embedded from other sites like YouTube. Still, Facebook hopes the added functionality will let users get more out of the video content on their feed, particularly since Facebook lets users preview the video without interrupting the scroll.

This new autoplay feature only applies to videos uploaded by individuals, bands and musicians. In other words, brand pages won’t be able to use autoplay for promotional videos, and Facebook doesn’t offer video advertisements at this time.

No details were released regarding a timeline for rolling out the feature to all users, or whether it will be available for Facebook’s desktop platform.

Image: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

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One of the owners, Admir Adil, noticed his 15-year-old daughter was incessantly checking Facebook, so he thought it only appropriate to create a flavor for other fans obsessed with the social media behemoth.

Admir and his brother Ibi Adil created their Facebook-flavored ice cream by simply mixing blue syrup atop vanilla ice cream and placing a small sign with a Facebook logo on it. Selling a scoop for a euro ($1.32), the ice cream apparently tastes like sugary sweets and chewing gum, but it’s become a hit as many passersby were immediately drawn to Facebook’s trademark logo — as well as the novelty.

The duo said they have not contacted Mark Zuckerberg for trademark use.

Image: Dusko Jaramaz/PixSell

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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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When users sign in to an app like Lyft or Words With Friends using their Facebook login credentials, they can now specify exactly what they would like to share with Facebook in a two-step process. The first step asks for “read permissions,” which dictate the information from the app accessible to Facebook. The second step presents “write permissions,” which if accepted, allow the user to post directly back to his news feed through the app.

Previously, the two permissions were a package deal, meaning you couldn’t agree to one without also green-lighting the other. The update in April granted users more control and enabled them to accept just one or the other if they weren’t comfortable accepting both, according to Chris Daniels, director of business development at Facebook. The update is now fully available to all users, and a recent study of certain “high quality” apps by the social network found that 80% of users accepted the permissions when prompted.

Facebook benefits from users logging in to third-party apps using their Facebook profile. Those who log in with Facebook count as “active” users for the platform — more logins mean more content shared back to the site. Facebook has more than 850 million login events per month, and 81 of the 100 top-grossing iOS apps support Facebook login features, according to the company’s blog post. On Android, 62 of the 100 top-grossing apps support Facebook logins.

The new permission option was based on feedback from users and developers who felt they needed more control, Daniels said. Often, users timid about sharing back to Facebook saw the permissions page and simply elected to bypass logging in altogether.

“We understand people’s concerns about apps posting on their Timeline or to their friends,” Facebook posted on its blog. “The recent changes to Login are just the beginning of more improvements you’ll see as we continue working to provide useful services for developers that are easy for users to understand.”

Have you ever skipped logging into an app because of Facebook permissions? Tell us in the comments below.

Image: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

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In an attempt to make it easier for businesses to create a Facebook ad, the company announced a deal with Shutterstock on Thursday that will provide free access to millions of images for use in ads. The photos will be available in Facebook’s ad creation tool.

“This is important especially for small businesses who may not have resources for sourcing quality images,” Facebook noted in a blog post.

In addition, businesses can use multiple images in different ads to test which ones work best and then place their buys accordingly. Ben Pavlovic, founding partner of VineSprout, a Chicago-based PR firm, says adding such functionality will help small businesses. “Before you had to take your own [photos] or find your own free service,” he says. “I also think you have companies out there that wouldn’t think twice about pulling a Google image.” Pavlovic says photos are an integral element. “Just in terms of engagement, finding the right image can make or break your ad,” he says.

As part of the announcement, Facebook also updated its Android and iOS Pages Manager apps. Users can now upload multiple images from their mobile phones and edit existing Page admins and add new Page admins to Pages they manage.

The upgrade comes after Facebook announced in June that more than 1 million advertisers are using the platform.

Image: Flickr, Orin Zebest

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