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Noah Kagan, one of Facebook’s first ever employees, was forced to leave the up-and-coming social network in 2006, and he missed out on a payday which could have totaled $100 million.
Noah Kagan, who is now running online startup AppSumo, was the 30th employee at Facebook when he was hired by founder Mark Zuckerberg as a product manager.
At the time, Facebook was a scrappy newcomer – Noah Kagan says: “Most decisions were me walking over to Mark’s desk for approval.”
And many employees were deeply devoted to the company – not least the young project manager who had graduated from Berkeley two years earlier.
“Facebook was my entire life,” he writes in the blog post explaining how he came to be fired.
“My social circle, my validation, my identity and everything was tied to this company.”
Noah Kagan also pays tribute to his fellow employees, most of whom were graduates of – or dropouts from – elite Ivy League universities.
“I’ve NEVER been around such smart people,” he says.
“I’ve never felt so consistent like I wasn’t the smartest person in the room.”
However, while he may have been enjoying his time at Facebook, Noah Kagan was apparently not always the most popular figure in the room.
“I wanted attention, I put myself before Facebook,” he says.
“I hosted events at the office, published things on this blog to get attention and used the brand more than I added to it.”
Moreover, as the firm grew, it changed from an entrepreneurial organization to more of a bureaucratic behemoth – and Noah Kagan failed to change with it.
He writes on his blog of his frustration at having to go through a secretary every time he wanted to see Mark Zuckerberg, and admits that in big meetings he “zoned the f*** out”.
But the last straw was when Facebook changed its membership policy to allow non-students to have accounts, and Noah Kagan leaked the information to a journalist.
While partying at the Coachella festival, he emailed a contact asking him to publicize the information as soon as the change was made the next day – but the journalist wrote a story on it that same night.
Noah Kagan was called in for a meeting with Matt Cohler, then Facebook’s head of product management, and told that he had become a “liability” to the company after eight months working there.
He was marched back to the office, where he had his telephone and computer taken away.
At the time he was devastated, and he now claims that it took him a year to get over the pain of rejection.
You might think that that pain would only have got worse over the years, as Facebook grew and this year’s IPO turned many of its earliest employees into multi-millionaires.
Yet even though he estimates he could have earned $100 million if he had stayed at the company, Noah Kagan insists he has no regrets.
Having worked at web firms such as Mint.com and KickFlip before starting AppSumo, he says of his departure from Facebook: “It is what it is.”
“Ultimately, I appreciate where I am now and all the experiences I got from NOT being there.”
Social network Facebook has begun deleting fake page “likes”, independent data suggests.
According to Pagedata, many of the site’s most “liked” pages suffered large drops in numbers on Wednesday.
The move follows the social network’s admission that 8.7% of its users are not “real”, many having been set up by spammers who use them to artificially make pages appear more popular.
The issue poses a problem for Facebook as it seeks to expand its targeted advertising service.
Facebook’s shares have slumped from their initial public offering of $38 in May to $20.62 on Thursday.
Facebook has begun deleting fake page likes
In a blog post written in August, Facebook said: “A <<like>> that doesn’t come from someone truly interested in connecting with a page benefits no-one.”
Technology news site The Verge, citing Pagedata‘s statistics, noted that some of the most popular pages on Facebook had suddenly shed significant numbers of users.
The page for Texas HoldEm Poker, one of the site’s most popular, shed 96,317 “likes” on Wednesday – compared with net gains of about 20,000 each day for the previous month.
Other prominent pages also saw a drop in numbers, including those of pop singers Rihanna (-28,275), Eminem (-15,420) and Lady Gaga (-34,326).
Facebook would not confirm that the purge was happening, but could not provide an alternative explanation for the drop in numbers.
Promoting online engagement with brands is a key component of Facebook’s business model, in which it uses key information – such as age, gender and location – to target certain advertisements at specific recipients.
However, this system is increasingly coming under threat from a black market of fake “likes”, sold in bulk in order to falsely boost a brand’s figures.
A simple search brings up a host of websites offering large numbers of Facebook fans or “likes” – as well as followers on Twitter and views on YouTube.
A party invitation which went viral on Facebook ended in rioting and injury after thousands of revellers descended in the small town of Haren in the Netherlands.
Haren had been braced for trouble all week after what should have been an invite to a small-scale celebration was passed on to 30,000 people.
The girl whose 16th birthday was being celebrated had not set her Facebook event to “private”.
Riot police broke up crowds of revellers who flocked to the town.
The girl who issued the invitation fled her home in Haren, a town of just under 19,000 near the city of Groningen, on Friday.
Haren had been braced for trouble all week after what should have been an invite to a small-scale celebration was passed on to 30,000 people
The party had been cancelled and police had issued an appeal to would-be revellers not to come to Haren but at least 3,000 turned up anyway.
“She posted the invitation on Facebook and sent it to friends, who then sent it to other friends and soon it spread like wildfire across the internet,” Groningen police spokeswoman Melanie Zwama told AFP news agency.
Hundreds of riot police were deployed to control the crowds, keeping them away from the street where the girl lives.
When trouble began, officers found themselves being pelted with bottles and stones, as well as flower pots even bicycles, the Dutch news agency ANP reports.
At least six people were hurt and 20 arrests were made as rioters vandalized and looted shops, setting a car on fire and damaging street signs and lamp-posts, according to Reuters news agency.
Some revellers accused the police of over-reacting.
Elsewhere, Dutch media were accused of giving the build-up to the party too much publicity.
Revellers could be seen wearing T-shirts marked “Project X Haren” after Project X – a film released earlier this year about a party which grows out of control.
Such T-shirts had been selling on the internet for 23 euros ($30) apiece. Some featured a crude logo of a man on all fours drinking from a bottle, AFP notes.
A new Facebook page has since been created called “Project Clean-X Haren” to clear up after Friday night’s disturbances. It had more than 17,000 “likes” as of Saturday morning.
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Facebook has decided to suspend the facial-recognition tool that suggests when registered users could be tagged in photographs uploaded to its website.
The move follows a review of Facebook’s efforts to implement changes recommended by the Data Protection Commissioner of Ireland last year.
Billy Hawkes, who did not request the tool’s total removal, said he was encouraged by the decision to switch it off for users in Europe by 15 October.
It is already unavailable to new users.
Facebook has decided to suspend the facial-recognition tool
Billy Hawkes said Facebook “is sending a clear signal of its wish to demonstrate its commitment to best practice in data protection compliance”.
Richard Allan, Facebook director of policy for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: “The EU has looked at the issue of securing consent for this kind of technology and issued new guidance.
“Our intention is to reinstate the tag-suggest feature, but consistent with new guidelines. The service will need a different form of notice and consent.”
The facial-recognition tool was not part of the company’s commercial activities and did not generate many user complaints, he added.
In December 2011 the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) gave Facebook six months to comply with its recommendations.
They included more transparency about how data is used and individuals are targeted by advertisers and more user control over privacy settings.
On Friday, Richard Allan said: “When you think of the very wide ranging investigation the DPC carried out into Facebook, they looked at every aspect of our service, and our overall scorecard is very good.
“In the vast majority of areas the DPC looked into, they found we are behaving in a way that’s not just compliant but a reasonable model for good practice.”
Also on Friday, the DPC said there were still some areas where more work was required, and it has asked for another update from Facebook in these areas in four weeks’ time.
Deputy Commissioner Gary Davis said the DPC remained concerned about whether photos marked for deletion were actually being deleted within 40 days as required under Irish Data Protection law.
“We also want some clarity about inactive and deactivated accounts – we think Facebook should contact those users after a period of time and see whether they want to come back,” he said.
Many people did return to the website after long periods away, Gary Davis said, but users with inactive accounts should be contacted within two years of their last log-in.
Gary Davis also said he would like Facebook to do more to educate existing users about its privacy policies.
“We would also like more information in relation to advertising – there is the potential for the use of terms that could be sensitive – such as ethnicity, trade union membership, political affiliation – to be used by advertisers to target others based on those words,” he said.
But he added: “The discussions and negotiations that have taken place, while often robust on both sides, were at all times constructive with a collective goal of compliance with data protection requirements.”
A new research has found that a banner message on Facebook showing users’ friends who had voted drove a third of a million more voters to the poll booths.
Sixty-one million Facebook users in the US were shown the message, while 600,000 others simply saw a message imploring them to vote.
A report in Nature shows the message drove about 60,000 extra votes in the 2010 US Congressional elections.
But the message appearing on friends’ pages drove a further 282,000 votes.
The work was led by James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, whose prior work has shown, among many other things, that the friends we choose may in part be down to genetics.
For the current work, he and his colleagues were interested in examining the oft-cited claim that online social networks influence offline decision-making – a claim that has until now been difficult to pin down.
A new research has found that a banner message on Facebook showing users' friends who had voted drove a third of a million more voters to the poll booths
“There’s been a lot of work in online social networks showing that app adoption can spread from person to person, and there’s been a lot of work in the real world showing that things like obesity and drinking and smoking can spread from person to person,” Prof. James Fowler said.
“But there hasn’t been any work that showed what happens online affects the real world.”
To look into that question, the team arranged for Facebook to post a non-partisan “social” message along the top of 61 million users’ pages, including a reminder that it was voting day, a clickable “I voted” button, a link to information about nearby polling places, and a list of up to six of the users’ friends who had already clicked the button.
About 600,000 users were shown an alternate, “informational” message, identical except for the absence of the friends data. A further 600,000 were shown no message at all.
The data on which users sought polling station data or clicked the “I voted” button could then be cross-correlated with publicly available data on who actually went to cast a vote.
The results showed to a high statistical significance that those who received the “social” message were more than 2% more likely to report having voted and 0.4% more likely to actually vote than those shown the “informational” message.
And users were 0.22% more likely to vote for each “close” friend – as measured by the degree of Facebook interaction – who received the message.
By correlating the findings with polling data and comparing with the “no-message” case, the team estimate that the message resulted in more than 340,000 extra votes being cast.
Prof. James Fowler conceded that the results represented a small fraction of the voting public, but that it was enough to sometimes make a large difference.
“I doubt it changed the outcome of the overall election, but it’s possible it had an impact on local elections,” he said.
“There are certainly circumstances in our history where a far smaller number of votes would have mattered: in 2000 in the US the presidential election was decided by just 537 votes in Florida.”
The findings are intriguing from a political point of view, but the study is also finally shedding light on the thorny problem of extracting these “peer influence” effects from the factors that drive the network’s formation in the first place.
What confounds that problem is what is called homophily – we tend to befriend people in real life or online with whom we share significant similarities.
“If we were just going to do an observational study where we just looked at the network to see whether or not people who voted tend to be connected to others who voted, we wouldn’t know if that was because they tended to become friends because they both like politics or if one friend influences another,” Prof. James Fowler said.
But the random selection of friends to show to users in the “social” message – some close friends, some only peripheral – should sidestep issues of homophily, he explained.
“The beauty of this experiment is that we can rule that out as an explanation for what we found,” he said.
And the scale of peer influence they found was notable.
“The <<friend>> vote is really critical,” he said.
“In this experiment we were able to show that if you just looked at the users and whether or not the message directly affected them you’d be missing the whole story; for every user that changed their behavior, there were four friends who changed their behavior.
“In other words, the network quadrupled the effect of the <<get out the vote>> message.”
Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of social network Facebook, has spoken for the first time of the drop in his company’s market value.
Mark Zuckerberg called the drop in his firm’s value “disappointing”. The value of its shares is almost half the $38 debut price in May.
But he vowed that Facebook will make more money on phones than on desktops.
“Over the next three to five years, the biggest question on everyone’s mind is really going to be how well Facebook does with mobile.”
Speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg said: “Literally, six months ago we didn’t have an ad on mobile.”
Speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg called the drop in Facebook's value disappointing
Earlier this year, Facebook launched native apps for Apple’s iOS smartphones and its Android rival by Google.
“Ads have to be more integrated into the product on mobile,” Mark Zuckerberg said.
In another exchange, he joked: “Everything I do breaks, but I fix it quickly.”
Facebook is the world’s most popular social network with 950 million users.
When asked of constant rumors that he was building a Facebook phone, he rejected the speculation and pointed to the site’s huge reach.
“If we make a phone we could get maybe 10 million users? Twelve million users? That doesn’t move the needle for us.
“Building a phone is the wrong strategy for us.”
He admitted the fall in Facebook’s share price had made it harder to find and retain staff.
“It doesn’t help,” he said.
“There are tons of people that are super-pessimistic,” Mark Zuckerberg said.
“I would personally rather be underestimated. It gives us latitude to go out and make some big bets.”
Since their debut at $38 in May, Facebook shares have lost 49% of their value. They closed at $19.43 on Tuesday.
Mark Zuckerberg owns about 444 million Facebook shares plus an option to issue another 60 million.
Last month, Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and one of Facebook’s earliest backers, sold much of his stake and made more than $1 billion in total from his investment.
Facebook announces it is cracking down on services that allow users to purchase Likes in bulk to boost the appearance of their page’s popularity.
Celebrities, organizations and brands all vie for fans to show their support by clicking the Like button on the social networking website.
But Facebook admitted on Friday that the Likes of a particular page might not necessarily reflect actual Facebook fans since marketers have increasingly circumvented the website’s policies and have been offering Likes for purchase, to bulk up numbers.
New Facebook security measures will work to make it more difficult for third parties to deceptively garners Likes.
Facebook announces it is cracking down on services that allow users to purchase Likes in bulk to boost the appearance of their page's popularity
“A Like that doesn’t come from someone truly interested in connecting with a Page benefits no one,” the company explained in a posting by their security team entitled “Improvements To Our Site Integrity Systems”.
“When a Page and fan connect on Facebook, we want to ensure that connection involves a real person.”
“We have recently increased our automated efforts to remove Likes on Pages that may have been gained by means that violate our Facebook Terms,” the announcement added.
The changes will likely mean a subtraction of about one per cent of the Likes on any given page.
Facebook maintained that it never sanctioned any of the rampant services available to purchase Likes and warned Page owners to be wary of marketing services that offer to build a brand’s presence on the website.
Facebook’s announcement seemed to be well received by users – the posting garnered over 700 Likes in the first few hours.
The admission that all Likes on a page may not be legitimate comes as Mark Zuckerberg’s empire struggles to prove it can monetize its popular web presence.
Advertising on the social networking website, one of the top destinations on the internet, is closely connected to a brand’s engagement with users and can often be quantified by the number of Likes a page earns.
In a crushing blow to the company before its highly anticipated IPO on May 18, General Motors pulled its $10 million advertising campaign on Facebook.
The auto-maker said they were reassessing how their marketing dollars were being spent and decided to make necessary adjustments.
But The Wall Street Journal cited sources who said GM execs were unimpressed with the effectiveness of Facebook as an advertising platform and just decided the partnership didn’t make sense.
Despite initial excitement about Facebook going public, the company stock has continued to plummet.
Shares of Facebook fell below $19 for the first time on Friday to $18.14, putting the shares about 52% below their IPO price of $38.
Analysts say Facebook’s innovation in terms of advertising will be key to generating revenue and boosting investor confidence in the viability of the company.
Far-right Austrian politician Heinz-Christian Strache has caused anger after posting a cartoon on Facebook, likened to anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda.
Heinz-Christian Strache posted a caricature of a banker with a hooked nose, wearing Star of David cufflinks.
Austrian Jewish leader Oskar Deutsch likened it to images used by the Nazis in the 1930s.
Heinz-Christian Strache, who leads the Freedom Party, has denied he was being anti-Semitic.
Heinz-Christian Strache posted a caricature of a banker with a hooked nose, wearing Star of David cufflinks
The cartoon was posted on Saturday, accompanied by a comment from Heinz-Christian Strache decrying “EU banking speculators” for taking tax money from Austrians.
On Sunday Heinz-Christian Strache posted a second version, labelled in English. The Star of David emblems had been removed from the banker’s cufflinks and the shape of his nose had also been changed.
Both images show another figure labelled “The Government” pouring a drink for the banker, while a third, poorly clothed and thin figure labelled “The People”, sits opposite the banker with a bone on his plate.
“It is not a coincidence that a caricature of Jews, similar to the ones in <<Der Stuermer>> in the 1930s and 1940s, appeared on the Facebook page of Freedom Party leader Mr. Strache,” Oskar Deutsch said, referring to a newspaper published by the Nazis.
Austrian politicians from both centre-left and conservative parties have condemned the cartoon.
The conservative People’s Party called on the Freedom Party (FPO) to address “the incendiary and discriminating tones within the party itself”.
A lawyer in Vienna has also said he will sue the FPO for holocaust denial, which is illegal in Austria.
Heinz-Christian Strache and the FPO have frequently faced accusations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
On Sunday Heinz-Christian Strache responded to the backlash with a further comment on Facebook saying he did not tolerate anti-Semitism and insisted that he was highlighting his scorn for “the caste of greedy bankers”.
Facebook’s stock plunged to an all-time low today as the market braced for the company’s insiders to dump their stock after the expiration of a lock-up period.
Investors ranging from Accel Partners to Goldman Sachs, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and Facebook board members James Breyer, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman are among those free to sell stock they own now.
By 10:30 a.m., the price was down 7% to $19.69 a share. By noon, it had climbed back to $19.95 a share. In May, the initial public offering of the stock was $38.
If the stock hits $19, it will have lost half its value since Facebook went public in May.
Before noon, the company lost $4 billion in market value, due to the plunging prices.
Facebook's stock plunged to an all-time low today as the market braced for the company's insiders to dump their stock after the expiration of a lock-up period
Mark Zuckerberg himself lost an estimated $1 billion Thursday morning alone.
It’s not yet known whether anyone had sold shares. The stock price decline could reflect investors’ anticipation of such a move.
More than 270 million shares have been unlocked – more than one-half of the 421 million shares sold in the May initial public offering of the social networking company.
Roughly 64 million shares of Facebook traded hands in the first hour of trading, more than double its 50-day daily average of just under 30 million shares.
“Pressure will be back on the shares now that liquidity is back in the market,” said Frank Davis, director of sales and trading at LEK Securities in New York.
“If (the value of) your holdings has been cut in half, are you going to sit around and risk the rest of that?”
It’s conceivable no one would sell those extra shares, but if too many do, Facebook’s stock would decline even more because the market would be flooded with additional shares.
It’s been a rough run for Facebook. After one of the most-anticipated IPOs in history, Facebook suffered what may be the most-botched public offering as trading glitches marred its first day.
Facebook, the world’s No. 1 Internet social network with 955 million users, has seen its shares pummeled since the market debut in May that put its value at more than $100 billion.
Investors have been concerned about Facebook’s ability to keep increasing revenue and make money from its growing mobile audience, even as many analysts hold positive long-term views.
Those eligible to sell additional shares Thursday were the investors and directors who had participated in the May IPO. The exception was CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who will be ineligible until November.
Other shareholders, including many Facebook employees, will be able to sell beginning in October. The last lockup period expires next May, a year after the IPO.
In all, up to 1.91 billion more shares could flood the stock market over the next several months – more than four times the 421 million shares that have been trading since Facebook’s IPO. Of the 1.91 billion, 271 million shares became eligible for sale Thursday.
What are lock-ups?
Lock-ups prevent company insiders from selling their shares in a newly-floated firm.
They usually start to expire 90 days from the initial public offering (IPO).
They are designed to prevent the share price from fluctuating wildly if too many investors decide to sell their shares all at once.
The lockup expired for initial investors on Thursday. It expires for Facebook employees in October.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg must keep his shares until November.
The internet is abuzz after pictures of Mark Zuckerberg emerged as we have never seen him before – topless and hanging out with a load of other topless guys.
TMZ posted the picture today which shows Mark Zuckerberg caressing his hairy – and quite buff – chest while obviously having a very good time cavorting with the other men.
The jury is out on what exactly is going on in the picture or where it was taken and Facebook have yet to respond to a request for comment.
The photo surfaced on the image-sharing site imgur, posted anonymously by someone who says they screen grabbed it from Facebook.
They claim the picture was “accidentally posted” by Facebook Director of Engineering Andrew Bosworth – who is seen also topless at the far right of the picture sporting a very masculine hat and bow tie combo.
Andrew Bosworth allegedly deleted the picture “seconds later”, but obviously not fast enough, as someone was able to capture it and make it available to the world wide web.
If this was an accident, many Facebook users will find something bitter sweet about the leak after Mark Zuckerberg and his team have repeatedly changed the site’s privacy settings over the years, which included claiming the rights to all pictures posted on the social networking site.
On the other hand, the picture isn’t going to do Mark Zuckerberg’s image any harm. After all appearing quite buff – for a computer nerd – hanging out shirtless with a few similarly shirtless friends shows the billionaire is just like everyone else, right?
Mark Zuckerberg caressing his hairy chest while obviously having a very good time cavorting with the other topless men
Coincidentally, the picture has emerged on the same day the Federal Trade Commission voted to finalize its settlement with Facebook, resolving charges that the social network exposed details about users’ lives without getting the required legal consent.
Facebook Inc. didn’t admit wrongdoing, but agreed to submit to government audits of its privacy practices every other year for the next two decades.
The company also committed to getting explicit approval from users before changing the types of content it makes public.
The settlement, announced in November, is similar to agreements the FTC reached separately with Google Inc. and Myspace.
The FTC approved the settlement Friday after a public comment period. It came a day after the FTC fined Google $22.5 million to resolve allegations that Google didn’t comply with the earlier settlement.
Both Facebook and Google have vast amounts of data on their users – Facebook through the things people share on the site, and Google through the searches and other things people do.
Such information is valuable because it can be used to improve the lucrative targeted advertising pitches that both companies aim at users.
Over the years, Facebook has been pushing users to voluntary share more about themselves. That ultimately encourages users and their friends to spend more time on the site, which in turn allows Facebook to sell more ads.
Although Facebook boasts that it gives users a variety of software settings so they can decide which photos, links and updates to share with whom, the company changes those options on a regular basis.
Much of the FTC’s complaint against Facebook centers on a series of changes that the company made to its privacy controls in late 2009.
The revisions automatically shared information and pictures about Facebook users, even if they previously programmed their privacy settings to shield the content.
Among other things, people’s profile pictures, lists of online friends and political views were suddenly available for the world to see, the FTC alleged.
The complaint also charges that Facebook shared its users’ personal information with third-party advertisers from September 2008 through May 2010 despite several public assurances from company officials that it wasn’t passing the data along for marketing purposes.
Facebook believes that happened only in limited instances, generally when users clicked on ads that appeared on their personal profile pages.
Most of Facebook’s users click on ads when they are on their “Wall” – a section that highlights their friends’ posts – or while visiting someone else’s profile page.
Under the settlement, Facebook must get explicit consent – a process known as “opting in” – before making changes that override existing privacy preferences.
The company also may not make misrepresentations about the privacy or security of users’ personal information – a broad clause that led to Google’s fine on Thursday.
Violations will be subject to civil penalties of up to $16,000 per day for each infringement.
Facebook had no comment beyond a statement that it is pleased the settlement received final approval.
The company’s stock gained 52 cents, or 2.5%, to $21.53 in midday trading Friday. Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, began trading publicly in mid-May, after the settlement with the FTC was reached.
Facebook has removed an Australian page that depicted Aboriginal people as drunks and welfare cheats after a public outcry.
The Aboriginal Memes page had allowed users to post jokes about indigenous people.
An online petition calling for the removal of “the racist page” has generated thousands of signatures. The government has also condemned it.
The page’s creator is believed to be a 16-year-old boy in Perth, reports say.
Facebook has removed an Australian page that depicted Aboriginal people as drunks and welfare cheats after a public outcry
“We recognize the public concern that controversial meme pages that Australians have created on Facebook have caused,” Facebook said in a statement to local media.
A meme is an idea that spreads through the internet.
“We believe that sharing information, and the openness that results, invites conversation, debate and greater understanding.
“At the same time, we recognize that some content that is shared may be controversial, offensive, or even illegal in some countries.”
“I think it’s absolutely inappropriate,” Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told ABC television.
“We don’t live by American laws here in Australia, we live by Australian laws and this is an Australian who is using the fact that Facebook is based in the US to get away from Australian laws.”
Australia’s communication and media authority launched an investigation into the page on Tuesday, reports say.
An online petition against the page on website change.org has gathered more than 17,000 signatures in just two days.
“The page Controversial Humor Aboriginal Memes is an attack on the Aboriginal people of Australia and violates this term,” the petition states, adding that racist terms were used “that completely belittle the rich heritage of the Aboriginal people”.
Facebook will allow app developers to advertise their products on its members’ mobile-device news feeds.
The network will charge a fee for every time users click on the ads to download the software from elsewhere.
Facebook had previously warned its financial health would suffer if it could not find ways to make money out its mobile users.
Its shares have nearly halved in price since its flotation, costing investors a total of about $50 billion.
Details of the latest move were revealed on the site’s developers blog.
It invites software developers to sign up to a “beta” test in which they can decide whether to target users of Apple’s iOS App Store or Android’s Google Play store.
Facebook will allow app developers to advertise their products on its members' mobile-device news feeds
A “power editor” option can also allow users to be targeted on the basis of what other apps they have downloaded within Facebook.
For example if they have played Disney’s Gardens of Times on their laptop via the network, they might then be offered other hidden-object games when using Facebook’s smartphone app.
If a user clicks on one of the links, they will be redirected to the appropriate app store where they can purchase the software.
Facebook will charge advertisers for every click made, and allows them to set a maximum budget.
The move is Facebook’s latest effort to make money from its mobile users.
It said it had 543 million active members using the site via a mobile phone or tablet at the end of June.
It has previously experimented with a number of other formats, including paid-for “Pages You May Like”.
It also introduced Sponsored Stories to its mobile app earlier in the year.
These are posts created by an advertiser that appear if a “friend” or page the user is connected to shares the material. By paying a fee, the business or organization can increase the likelihood their posts will be seen.
The site’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said it was making about $500,000 worth of sales through mobile Sponsored Stories every day at the end of June.
“People who use our mobile services are more active Facebook users than people who only use our desktop services,” Mark Zuckerberg said, explaining why it was important for his firm to focus on the sector.
“On average, mobile users are around 20% more likely to use Facebook on any given day.”
The firm’s chief financial officer, David Ebersman, added that daily web views in some developed markets had started to decline in favor of mobile use.
He said this could be why it was experiencing “flat” payment revenues – cash raised by taking a cut of fees charged on its site.
Although Facebook does allow users to download and play games on its mobile apps, most have ignored the option and download third-party titles via Apple or Google’s stores, even if they first heard about the software via Facebook.
“In the past 30 days, we have sent people to the Apple App Store and Google Play 146 million times, via clicks from channels such as news feed, timeline, bookmarks and App Center,” Facebook said in its developers blog.
Bingo Friendzy, Facebook’s first real-money gambling app, has been launched in UK.
Developed by London-based online gambling operator Gamesys, the Bingo Friendzy app allows users aged 18 and over to play games for cash prizes.
Facebook said only its UK members would be able to view the app.
The website’s largest gaming partner, Zynga, said it also planned to introduce real-money gambling versions of its games next year.
Bingo Friendzy, Facebook’s first real-money gambling app, has been launched in UK
A Facebook spokeswoman stressed Bingo Friendzy was not a joint venture, saying the game had been developed entirely by Gamesys.
“Real money gaming is a popular and well-regulated activity in the UK, and we are allowing a partner to offer their games to adult users on the Facebook platform in a safe and controlled manner,” she said.
Facebook intends to use age-gating technology to ensure under-18s and “vulnerable people” are unable to access the app.
The social network typically takes a 30% cut of transactions on its network, but would not confirm if that was the case with this title, saying it was “commercially sensitive information”.
Gamesys, one of the largest UK online gambling companies, operates the Sun Bingo and Heart Bingo, as well as the UK’s leading bingo-and-slots website Jackpotjoy.com.
In its press release, the company said users would have access to self-help tools to reduce the risk of gambling addiction, including the ability to set spending limits.
Facebook said the decision to launch a real-cash gambling app in the UK had been motivated by “a mature and very well-regulated gambling market”.
Gamesys’ gambling activities are licensed and regulated by the government of Gibraltar, allowing it to offer titles in the UK.
In the United States the situation with real-money online gambling is more complicated – the law currently forbids banks and others offering payment processing services to betting services targeted at US citizens.
Facebook has become such a pervasive force in modern society that increasing numbers of employers, and even some psychologists believe people who aren’t on social networking sites are “suspicious”.
The German magazine Der Taggspiegel went so far as to point out that accused theater shooter James Holmes and Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik have common ground in their lack of Facebook profiles.
On a more tangible level, Forbes.com reports that human resources departments across the country are becoming more wary of young job candidates who don’t use the site.
The common concern among bosses is that a lack of Facebook could mean the applicant’s account could be so full of red flags that it had to be deleted.
German magazine Der Taggspiegel pointed out that accused theater shooter James Holmes and Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik have common ground in their lack of Facebook profiles
Slate.com tech reporter Farhad Manjoo wrote in an advice column that young people shouldn’t date anyone who isn’t on Facebook.
“If you’re of a certain age and you meet someone who you are about to go to bed with, and that person doesn’t have a Facebook page, you may be getting a false name. It could be some kind of red flag,” he says.
Farhad Manjoo points out that these judgements don’t apply to older people who were already productive adults before social media became widespread.
The tech news site Slashdot summed up Der Taggspiegel’s story about social networking as “not having a Facebook account could be the first sign that you are a mass murderer”.
It points out that James Holmes, who is accused of killing 12 people and an unborn child and wounding 58 others at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people with a car bomb and mass shooting, did not use Facebook and had small online footprints.
Anders Breivik used MySpace and James Holmes was reportedly on the hookup site Adult Friend Finder.
Psychologist Christopher Moeller told the magazine that using Facebook has become a sign of having a healthy social network.
Psychologists have noted that James Holmes, along with several noted mass murderers, have lacked any real friends.
And this is what the argument boils down to: It’s the suspicion that not being on Facebook, which has become so normal among young adults, is a sign that you’re abnormal and dysfunctional, or even dangerous, ways.
Facebook has revealed that it believes there are now more than 83 million fake users on the social network.
In Facebook filings published this week, it said 8.7% of its 955 million active users might not be real.
Duplicate profiles made up 4.8% of the users, user-misclassified accounts amounted to 2.4%, and 1.5% of users were described as “undesirable”.
The estimate came at a time of growing concern about the value of marketing on the platform.
In total, the company said it estimated there were 83.09 million fake users, which it classified in three groups.
The largest group of “fakes” were duplicates, which the company defined as “an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account.”
Facebook has revealed that it believes there are now more than 83 million fake users on the social network
Others were described as “user-misclassified” where, Facebook explained “users have created personal profiles for a business, organization, or non-human entity such as a pet”.
Finally, “undesirable” accounts were profiles deemed to be in breach of Facebook’s terms of service. Typically, this means profiles which have been used for sending out spam messages or other content.
Facebook, whose business model relies on targeted advertising, is coming under increased scrutiny over the worth of its advertising model which promotes the gathering of “likes” from users.
“We generate a substantial majority of our revenue from advertising,” the company said in its filing.
“The loss of advertisers, or reduction in spending by advertisers with Facebook, could seriously harm our business.”
Last week, digital distribution firm Limited Press alleged that, based on its own analytics software, 80% of clicks on its advertisements within Facebook had come from fake users.
In a post on its Facebook page, the company said: “Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t reply.
“Do we know who the bots belong too [sic]? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes.”
After a surge of attention to the company, it has since removed the Facebook posting, and said Facebook was now looking into its concerns.
Swiss bank UBS lost 349 million Swiss francs ($356 million) by investing in Facebook shares, more than halving its profits.
UBS’s second quarter profits were $425 million Swiss francs ($434 million), compared with 1bn francs a year earlier.
Facebook was valued at $104 billion at its flotation in May, but the shares are now 39% below the initial sale price.
As a result, UBS’s investment bank reported a loss in the quarter, compared with a profit of 730 million Swiss francs a year earlier.
Swiss bank UBS lost 349 million Swiss francs ($356 million) by investing in Facebook shares, more than halving its profits
UBS warned that failure to resolve problems within Europe’s banking system “accentuated by the reduction in market activity levels typically seen in the third quarter” meant its next set of earnings were likely to be flat.
As a result, UBS said it would look at making further cost savings. The Swiss group is already in the process of cutting 3,500 jobs.
The company also said it was on target to meet new Basel III bank rules and would not have to issue new shares to generate additional money.
Its ratio of high quality – tier 1 – capital to lending was 8.8%, just shy of the 9% that will be required from next year.
Deutsche Bank has reported a 63% fall in second quarter earnings to 375 million Euros ($460 million) from 969 million Euros last year.
Like UBS, Deutsche blamed the economic downturn in Europe and the US for lower fees and commissions as firms cut back on big deals and share sales.
In a joint statement, Deutsche’s co-chairmen Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain said: “The European sovereign debt crisis continues to weigh on investor confidence and client activity across the bank.”
Facebook shares have fallen to a new low, as concerns about its mobile strategy sparked a sell-off when markets opened on Friday.
Late Thursday, in its first report as a public company, Facebook said it lost $157 million from April to June.
Its shares plunged more than 16% to $22.37 when trading began in New York on Friday, worse than the declines seen in after-hours trade on Thursday.
Facebook shares have fallen to a new low, as concerns about its mobile strategy sparked a sell-off
Facebook shares were priced at $38 when it listed on the NASDAQ in May.
Facebook’s results on Thursday showed that revenue in the second quarter of the year had grown 32% to $1.18 billion, just beating forecasts. But analysts at Piper Jaffray said it appeared investors wanted “more than a slight beat”.
The number of monthly active users (MAUs) rose 29% from the same period last year to 955 million, but some analysts question the reliability of this data given the number of fake profiles on the social network.
The number of people who logged in daily to Facebook’s site from their mobile devices surged 67% year-on-year to 543 million.
But the company has yet to resolve how it generates profits as users move from the computer desktop version to accessing the site via mobile phone.
“We don’t view these results as dramatically good or bad,” said Citi analyst Mark Mahaney.
“Key questions remain: the future of Facebook mobile monetization and the future of Facebook user engagement.”
Yves Saint Laurent has launched a limited edition Facebook-inspired eyeshadow palette on July 19.
Popular culture often inspires beauty collaborations; Betty Boop for Lancôme and Miss Piggy for MAC are just some recent examples.
Now, as a “declaration of love” to its fans, YSL Fragrances & Beauty has gone one step further. Inspired by Facebook as a whole, the French brand has designed a palette which includes the “now highly identifiable Facebook blue with the luxurious Yves Saint Laurent design”.
The palette includes four shades inspired by Facebook: royal blue, violet, white and black.
Yves Saint Laurent has launched a limited edition Facebook-inspired eyeshadow palette on July 19
According to Kiss and Makeup, only 1,650 of the Pure Chromatics Devoted To Fans palettes were produced, which will be available on the brand’s Facebook page as well in U.S. stores at $60.
And any Facebook fan who buys the new palette will receive special “privileges”, such as exclusive information, perks and services through YSL Facebook feed and in store.
Damien Vincent, commercial director of Facebook France, emphasized the significance of the launch, saying: “We are honored that a prestigious brand such as Yves Saint Laurent resumes Facebook color codes to launch a unique product destined for his fans.”
The new digital marketing strategy comes amid reports that the French fashion house will introduce new branding in the coming months, most likely to coincide with Hedi Slimane’s first designs for the label’s Spring 2013 collection.
Yves Saint Laurent is reportedly dropping the Yves from its name, changing the iconic label to simply, Saint Laurent Paris.
However, it is expected that the YSL logo, which has long been one of the most well-recognized symbols of French luxury, will remain.
Facebook and Yahoo have settled their patent row and formed an advertising alliance.
Yahoo had sued Facebook in March claiming 10 of its intellectual properties had been infringed.
Facebook subsequently bought 750 patents from IBM and counter-sued. It later bought hundreds more patents from Microsoft to strengthen its defense.
Facebook and Yahoo have settled their patent row and formed an advertising alliance
The firms said they would now cross-license innovations from each other and collaborate on future projects.
The AllThingsD blog – which broke the news ahead of the official announcement – reported that Yahoo’s interim chief executive Ross Levinsohn had begun moves to resolve the dispute immediately after taking over from his ousted predecessor.
It added that Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg soon became involved in the resulting negotiations.
A press release quoted Ross Levinsohn as saying: “We are excited to develop a deeper partnership with Facebook, and I’m grateful to Sheryl and her team for working hard together with our team to develop this dynamic agreement… Combining the premium content and reach of Yahoo as the world’s leading digital media company with Facebook provides branded advertisers with unmatched opportunity.”
Sheryl Sandberg added: “Yahoo’s new leaders are driven by a renewed focus on innovation and providing great products to users. Together, we can provide users with engaging social experiences while creating value for marketers.”
The move may help secure Yahoo’s top job for Ross Levinsohn. He had been competing for the role against Hulu’s boss Jason Kilar.
But, the video streaming service announced Jason Kilar had “graciously declined” to be considered for the role shortly after news of the patent agreement leaked.
Although no money appears to have exchanged hands, the row has still proven to be expensive.
Facebook had paid Microsoft $550 million to buy 650 patents and license a further 275. It has not disclosed the cost of its deal with IBM, although the tech site Cnet has suggested the sum was $83 million.
Facebook promises to address complaints it was responsible for wiping email contacts in some users’ mobile phone address books, replacing them with @facebook.com listings.
The social network blamed the deletion of users’ contacts on a software bug.
The problem followed last week’s move to make Facebook’s own addresses visible by default on its website, hiding the ones originally listed.
Facebook said it was fixing the issue, promising it “will be resolved soon”.
The company was unable to confirm the scale of the bug, but reports by The Verge and CNN Money suggested users who had activated Facebook Contact Sync on Blackberry and Android phones, and devices running the beta versions of Apple’s iOS6 and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 had been affected.
Facebook promises to address complaints it was responsible for wiping email contacts
The social network linked the issue to the application programming interface (API) at the heart of a tool designed to ensure that when its members amended their contact details, the changes would be made to their Facebook friends’ smartphone address books.
The software was designed to copy over its users’ “primary email addresses” – the ones they used to log into the social network.
However, a statement acknowledged that “for people on certain devices, a bug meant that the device was pulling the last email address added to the account rather than the primary address, resulting in @facebook.com addresses being pulled”.
Since Facebook’s synchronization tool only synchronized email addresses that were visible on its site, and it had made third-party addresses invisible by default, pre-existing contacts were deleted as a result.
“The gravity of changing personal data on users’ phones is much greater than just changing them on a cloud-based service or a website,” said Anthony Mullen, senior analyst at the tech consultants Forrester.
“The lesson here is Facebook should have offered a simple wizard walking people through the change showing what impact it would have rather than just letting it happen automatically.
“However, despite talk of a backlash it doesn’t seem these problems have been grave enough to have motivated users to quit the network.”
Zynga has unveiled Farmville 2, a sequel to its most successful video game to date.
Farmville 2 builds on the original real-time farming simulation adding “3D graphics” which allow players to view the world from different angles.
Users cannot carry over items from the original game, adding an incentive to buy virtual goods to speed up progress.
Investors will hope it proves popular. The firm’s stock has traded below its flotation price since April because of fears of waning interest in its titles.
Some analysts have pointed to Facebook users shifting to mobile devices. Although Zynga offers “express” versions of some of its games via the mobile Facebook app, these have not proved popular.
Zynga has unveiled Farmville 2, a sequel to its most successful video game to date
It has acted to counter this trend by offering a selection of titles as separate app downloads, although it has not announced plans to do this with Farmville 2.
The new game was announced at Zynga’s Unleashed press event at its San Francisco headquarters, where it was also developed.
“One of the things that people will notice right away is that it’s our first 3D game,” said the firm’s chief technology officer Cadir Lee.
“All the buildings, crops and animals are shown in 3D. You can see them from multiple directions, they can rotate, you can see them more richly – so it provides a certain pop in the game itself.
“The game also has more social elements and a lot more crafting: the crops that you harvest are what you use in the game to make things which you then use to make other things, like on a natural farm.”
According to independent traffic tracking service Appdata the original Farmville peaked with about 82 million users playing it at least once a month in March 2010.
More than two years later Zynga revealed the title was still its biggest earner, accounting for 29% of its revenue over the first three months of 2012.
The latest Appdata data suggests 21.7 million users still log on at least once a month to tend to their crops, trees and animals.
Other titles unveiled at the event included The Ville, another revamp of an earlier game. Based on Yoville, players are tasked with building a house and developing relationships with other players.
It also showed off Zynga Elite Slots, an “adventure” title featuring different fruit machines, and Chefville, a restaurant simulation in which players can entertain their friends.
Third-party developers were wooed with the announcement of API (application programming interface) tools to make it easier for them to create games based on Zynga’s software.
Resulting titles are then to be offered on the firm’s own website.
Participants must also offer their creations via Facebook – something that may prevent the move from causing tension with the social network.
Zynga said Atari had confirmed it would now join its network with an as yet undisclosed game.
If you haven’t looked closely at your Facebook contact information in a while, then it may come as a surprise.
The social network has taken it upon itself to change users’ email address and replace it with one that ends in “@facebook.com”.
Facebook has taken it upon itself to change its 900 million users' email address and replace it with one that ends in “@facebook.com”
How to change your email address back:
1. Go into the “About” section of your profile
2. Where the email address is displayed, click “Edit”
3. Click on the circle along from the @facebook.com address
4. Change setting to “hidden from timeline”
5. Click on circle next to other email address and choose “shown on timeline”
6. Hit “Save” at the bottom of the edit box
Facebook has taken it upon itself to change its 900 million users’ email address and replace it with one that ends in “@facebook.com”.
The changeover happened on Monday, with each individual’s personal email account being hidden in place of the one Facebook thinks you should use.
It means that anyone who searches for you on Facebook and wanted to send an email will now only be able to see @facebook.com – unless you manually revert.
This means the email will come via Facebook messages instead of another account.
Technology blogs lit up after outraged users noticed the change had occurred.
“Don’t do this again,” wrote Gizmodo while Forbes.com declared it “presumptuous”.
Facebook has taken it upon itself to change its 900 million users' email addresses and replace it with one that ends in “@facebook.com”
Facebook claimed the change is to protect users’ privacy and security by not displaying a personal email address but the site’s more generic one.
A spokesman said: “As we announced back in April, we’ve been updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site.
“In addition to everyone receiving an address, we’re also rolling out a new setting that gives people the choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their timelines.”
It is not the first time Facebook has pulled a “Big Brother” move on social network users.
Anyone who uses Facebook is already turning over reams of sensitive personal information to large companies every day.
There has been much criticism of Facebook’s changeover to the Timeline profile – drawing complaints that it makes past activity more easily accessible.
Facebook also launched a new feature this week which uses the GPS signal in cell phones to help you find friends – and potential new friends – nearby.
The “Friendshake” feature will allow you to make friends with people who are close by. The time-saving feature means that, if you meet a group of new people, you can all use this for one-touch friendship, rather than manually finding out each person’s name and separately adding them.
Some users may find this a boon to easily connect with new acquaintances, while others may see this as an invasion of privacy and way for unwanted people to get your attention.
However, the feature is currently one you have to manually turn on, by visiting http://www.fb.com/ffn – the last letters are an acronym for Find Friends Nearby.
When you enter the URL into your mobile browser, Facebook will provide a list of others who have visited the same page recently in the same area. A quick click will then add you as friends.
How to change your email address back:
1. Go into the “About” section of your profile
2. Where the email address is displayed, click “Edit”
3. Click on the circle along from the @facebook.com address
4. Change setting to “hidden from timeline”
5. Click on circle next to other email address and choose “shown on timeline”
6. Hit “Save” at the bottom of the edit box
Facebook has decided to buy an Israeli startup specializing in facial recognition technology – Face.com.
The firm already provides software that allows Facebook’s members to identify and tag photos of their friends.
The terms of the deal are not known, but Reuters quotes estimates of $55-60 million.
Tagging is a popular feature on Facebook, but privacy advocates have raised concerns about the technology.
Face.com’s software scans photos Facebook users upload, and suggests friends they may wish to tag with just one click.
According to the social network, the acquisition does not mean there will be changes to Facebook’s current face detection and recognition systems for photos.
“People who use Facebook enjoy sharing photos and memories with their friends, and Face.com’s technology has helped to provide the best photo experience,” said Facebook’s spokesperson.
“This transaction simply brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house.”
Facebook has decided to buy an Israeli startup specializing in facial recognition technology Face.com
UK campaign group Privacy International warned of what it described as the potential pitfalls of the technology.
“Facebook are in the process of building the largest and most accurate facial recognition database in the world, and with great power comes great responsibility,” said Emma Draper, the organization’s head of communications.
“We would hope to see very strict safeguards on how this information is stored and who has access to it, particularly if – as seems increasingly likely – Facebook is going to start making money from it.”
But Facebook refuted the suggestion that it was building a facial recognition database, explaining that the technology simply allowed people on Facebook to tag images of their friends quickly and easily, without allowing users to identify anyone on the social network unless they were already friends with them.
Face.com is an 11-employee startup located in the heart of Tel Aviv’s startup community on Rothschild Boulevard, locally known as the Silicon Boulevard.
The firm could not be reached for comment, but in a statement on its website it said that “by working with Facebook directly, and joining their team, we’ll have more opportunities to build amazing products that will be employed by consumers – that’s all we’ve ever wanted to do”.
Face.com launched its first product in 2009, and also supports third-party apps such as Photo Finder, Photo Tagger, and CelebrityFindr, which allows Twitter users to search for photos of celebrities.
Facebook has recently been expressing great interest in mobile and photo-sharing – in April, it bought Instagram for $1billion, and weeks later launched a photo sharing smartphone app called Camera.
Both apps allow users to add filters and make other tweaks to photographs.
Facebook will pay $10 million to charity to settle a lawsuit over the way it used “social” ads.
Known as a “sponsored story”, the ads popped up on a user’s friends’ pages after the user clicked to “like” a firm’s advert.
The lawsuit was brought by five members of Facebook who said the ads violated Facebook members’ rights to control the use of their activity on the site.
Facebook has declined to comment on the lawsuit and settlement.
The deal with users who sued was reached in May, but court documents were made public this weekend.
Facebook will pay $10 million to charity to settle a lawsuit over the way it used "social" ads
The Facebook users filed their lawsuit in December 2011 in a federal court in San Jose, California, claiming that the social network had violated the state law by making their “likes” known to others without allowing them to opt out or paying them.
According to Reuters news agency, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is quoted in the lawsuit as saying that such friend endorsement is the “Holy Grail” of advertising.
But the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
“California has long recognized a right to protect one’s name and likeness against appropriation by others for their advantage,” Judge Lucy Koh wrote, reported Reuters.
Facebook said the settlement funds would go to charity.
It is just another court case involving the social networking giant, which listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange in May.
One of the most recent cases involves Mark Zuckerberg and the banks leading the firm’s flotation being sued by shareholders who allege that the site’s revised growth figures were not disclosed to all investors.
In a different case, Yahoo has filed an intellectual property lawsuit against Facebook, claiming the social network has infringed 10 of its patents, including systems and methods for advertising on the web.
Facebook denies the allegations.
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