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Facebook Adds Organ Donor Oand ption to Timeline

May 03, 2012 Add Comment

facebook on Tuesday unveiled an organ donor status option for Timeline, a move designed to help more than 114,000 people in the U.S. and millions more around the world who are waiting for a live-saving heart, kidney or liver transplant.
“Many of those people — an average of 18 people per day –- will die waiting, because there simply aren’t enough organ donors to meet the need,” Facebook notes in a blog entry explaining the move. “Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis.”
As the video above explains, designating yourself as an organ donor is easy. All you need to do is go to your Timeline, click on “Life Event” and then “Health & Wellness.” Then, you’ll see the option for “Organ Donor.” At that point, you can add when and where you registered and your personal story.
For those who aren’t organ donors, Facebook is providing a link to the appropriate registry. As with other Timeline entries, you can make your organ donor status public or private.

The move, which Facebook had alluded to on Monday, comes as the 901 million-strong social network has adopted more socially conscious policies of late, including an anti-bullying initiative and a referral system for friends expressing suicidal thoughts.
Update: In the video below, Zuckerberg explained his motivation for the program with Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts. Among the driving factors was Zuckerberg’s friendship with Steve Jobs, whose life was extended following a liver transplant.

Facebook’s photo app: Dissecting the latest details

February 28, 2012 Add Comment

The allegedly leaked information on the Facebook photo app has fully surfaced, and here's our quick takeaway about what's (hopefully) bound for your iPhone.

This morning, the world got a hold of an early look at Facebook’s photo-sharing app. Being the social networking giant it is, Facebook is poised to take the mobile world by storm with what could easily be the photo app to rule them all. Even the brief glimpse and limited information we’ve had about the project have been enough to yield praise and excitement over the forthcoming application. Now TechCrunch has revealed more thorough insights about its early look at the Facebook mobile photo app that could make a convert out of even the most loyal Instagram addict. Here are some of the initial impressions we can gather from what’s available thus far, as well as a couple of the most intriguing features.

More than just a photo app?

There’s the distinct possibility this is more than just a photo-sharing app. It could very well be an entirely redesigned Facebook application, something that mobile users have been petitioning for. The depth of what this app seems to offer also makes us wonder whether it’s being designed with the iPad specifically in mind (there currently is no official Facebook app for the iPad). Whether it’s a redesign for smartphones or Facebook’s first go at a full-blown iPad app, some of the images make it look like there’s more than photo sharing at play here.

Facebook and Apple go head-to-head over social-mobile tech?

February 28, 2012 Add Comment

A new patent from Apple revealing geo-social networking software and a few leaked Facebook mobile projects suggest the two industry titans may be edging in on one another's territory.

Apple and Facebook are two Silicon Valley titans that have a stranglehold on the digital world. And until quite recently, it seems like they have each been content to dominate their respective arenas of technology: Apple’s being mobile and Facebook’s being social. Of course every Web 2.0 company understands the need to not be the best at one thing but at least try to be the best at everything, and recent projects from Apple and Facebook that have surfaced reveal they are both taking this to heart. Looks like some toes are about to get stepped on.

Facebook gets mobile

Facebook’s been rather quiet on the mobile scene. Its official app hasn’t been anything to write home about (unless you’re complaining about it, as many have), it hasn’t released an iPad app yet, and all those Facebook phone rumors haven’t panned out (at least yet) unless you’re counting the deep Facebook integration with the INQ Cloud. When Apple announced that iOS 5 would feature Twitter at its core, it seemed solidified that Facebook’s mobile ambitions have either stalled or are in flux. But after yesterday’s revelation, we’re more inclined to think Facebook might want to go its own way. Details about a forthcoming Facebook photo-sharing app of some sort surfaced, showing off a highly-developed project that would take elements from all the most popular photo-sharing apps out there and combine them with the mass appeal that the world’s largest social network has. It’s uncertain whether this is a standalone app that will complement Facebook or something to be woven into its current app; whatever it is, it’s getting hype for all the right reasons. It would be a natural transition for Facebook to segueway into mobile: The camera phone is inarguably one of the most popular features of the smartphone, and photo-sharing apps (especially those that integrate with Facebook) are big business. Take into account that Facebook is the world’s most popular photo-sharing platform, and you can see the progression toward the company getting a firm foot in the mobile door.

Adding to Facebook’s mobile mix is this Project Spartan business. Facebook is allegedly planning to redesign its apps for the mobile Safari browser via HTML 5. The assumption here is that the social network wants to take away some of the strength Apple’s App Store gives it over mobile while also giving users a way to access apps on mobile browsers. A Facebook Web app store has possibilities, but call us skeptics for the time being. But if anything, it’s an indication Facebook isn’t totally content playing second fiddle.

Apple gets social

Facebook’s not the only one edging in on another’s territory. Apple has filed a patent application to connect iOS users to those in their general vicinity who have similar interests. “A user of a mobile device can identify another user using another mobile device who is close by, if both users have requested to participate in networking. Common interests and experiences of two or more users located close to each other can be identified from content, including automatically created usage data of the mobile device.” The patent goes on to explain that users will be notified about their potential friend and “means of initiating communication” will be provided. Apple says meeting new people with similar backgrounds can be difficult and time-consuming, and letting your iOS device pull your data and then search the area for another iOS user with similar software could cut down on the tedious process. Bundle this with some sort of platform to find, collect, and access these found contacts and you have a viable Apple social network on (or rather, in) your hands.

Right off the bat, this doesn’t seem as fluid a step as Facebook’s mobile-photo project does. There have been third party apps with similar concepts that have been passed off as creepy or raise privacy concerns. Of course, being an official iOS app means it will bear more weight with users, but after Locationgate, not every Apple aficionado is as trusting with this information. That said, it has promise: The immediate fanfare social app Color received was due to its technology and revolutionary way of seeing social networks in relation to geography. If Apple can harvest this idea and avoid Color’s missteps, the app could find a fast following. And the very things that Color got wrong, Apple notoriously gets right. Simple, intuitive UI, well-executed product launches, automatic user base. Color co-founder Peter Pham (who recently left the company), a former employee of Apple, praised its self-explanatory applications and UIs, saying Color wanted to mimic this – something it wasn’t able to do, partially contributing to its user isolation. And the fact that Color hasn’t been able to build a database of loyal years means the app hasn’t be able to work as it should, and everything iOS comes with hoards of fans willing to try its services at launch.

Are Apple and Facebook stepping into the ring?

Just because Apple and Facebook have respective social and mobile aspirations, does it mean the two are about to become enemies? There are two of the most powerful companies in the world that also happened to have a bit of a past. There was some documented fallout after Facebook pulled integration with Apple’s Ping service, and there have been ample undocumented whispers about remaining tensions between these two ambitious companies. An all-out public airing of grievances a la the Facebook-Google data wars fiasco seems unlikely, as both Facebook and Apple tend to keep their business cards close to their chests. But it’s clear that being the best at one thing isn’t good enough, and each know that mobile and social platforms and applications are only going to continue dominating the digital landscape. Having a tight grip on one simply isn’t enough.

Facebook wants to turn the Open Graph into a mobile app store

February 28, 2012 Add Comment

Facebook unveiled plans to push mobile payments via the Open Graph, and it could challenge other mobile operating systems.

You might not think Facebook would be making waves at Mobile World Congress, but you’d be wrong. Today the social network announced its new mobile billing service – signaling it very much intends to compete with mobile app stores, namely iOS and Android marketplaces.

First, the details of the announcement: Facebook is partnering with AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, T-Mobile USA, Verizon, Vodafone, KDDI, and Softbank Mobile Corp. to begin its own system, which will allow users to make charges via the Facebook platform as long as their phones are covered by one of the above mentioned networks.

Facebook is also pushing to standardize HTML5, an effort that would make it easier for developers creating mobile apps – payment based services included. To that end, Facebook has introduced a test service called RingMark. “There’s rampant technology fragmentation across mobile browsers, so developers don’t know which parts of HTML5 they can use to deliver their apps to customers,” CTO Bret Taylor said earlier today. Essentially, this would turn the Open Graph into Facebook’s app store, a place for easy monetary transactions.

The single-step application would eliminate the need for SMS device verification, an annoying roadblock users begrudgingly often deal with when making purchases at the moment. The SDK will be released in the near future so app makers can make their products available via Facebook, which of course, drives its Open Graph activity.

Facebook has long had mobile aspirations and the Open Graph is how it will realize them. The Open Graph is Facebook’s app store, and it’s one that isn’t subject to what OS you use – whether you have an iPhone, an Android, a Windows Phone, whatever, you can access and make purchases via the Facebook app library. Yes, at its most basic, this means you’re using an app store within an app.

Now, Facebook’s already bagged users: There are more than 800 million of them, and the Open Graph has performed well from the outset. But Facebook’s doing its very best to make this as appealing as possible to developers. The Pay Dialog is all developers will need to integrate into their own apps, which supports desktop and mobile, supports app-specific currency, and doesn’t required additional permissions since Facebook and the carriers work out these details. That all sounds pretty nice to developers’ ears.

It became pretty clear in Facebook’s S-1 filing that mobile is where the money – and users – are at. It’s the future of Facebook, as well as where it plans on making real money. Monetizing mobile, however, hasn’t hit quite yet, and a simple, user- and developer-friendly mobile payment system would tie all the loose ends together.

Facebook will never charge you… because it already does

February 03, 2012 Add Comment

Following the Facebook IPO are old concerns about a pay-for model being introduced to the site but don't worry--you're already giving Facebook what it wants.

The persistent rumor that Facebook will someday charge its users to access the site simply will not die. Since Facebook’s early days, users have clamored around the myth that someday the social network would take captive their years’ worth of photos, comments, friendships, and check-ins. And time after time, the myth has been busted.

Now the announcement of Facebook’s IPO process has resurrected old fears, and yet again the rumors about a paid-for service are insufferably making the rounds. It’s time to extinguish this thing once and for awhile, and this time we have new insight from the company S-1 to lend a little support.

Facebook says it won’t

This past fall yet another pay-for-Facebook induced craze hit the site as a result of the Timeline announcement. An alleged price grid announcing that there would be different subscription rates to use the site had users in a frenzy – enough so that Facebook actually commented on the rumors.On Facebook’s official profile, the site cleared things up:

“A rumor on the Internet caught our attention. We have no plans to charge for Facebook. It’s free and always will be.”

And this coincides with the message on the login page.

Sure, things change when a company goes public, but this is completely central to Facebook’s core. It simply makes no sense, unless you think Mark Zuckerberg and company originally set out to lure in users, trap their data, and make off with it like bandits while simultaneously tricking them into paying for a service they’d been duped by.

Facebook’s entire S-1 is about the user

While we don’t think Facebook is out to reel users into paying, we understand the cynicism when it comes to the site’s intentions. This sort of tension between the site and its users over data-harboring has left some feeling exploited. Of course, both parties are to blame, and this system has to become an accepted necessary evil of using Facebook.

That said, read the S-1 and you might feel a little better. This excerpt particularly speaks to that, and it might help calm any fears:

“Our culture emphasizes rapid innovation and prioritizes user engagement over short-term financial results. Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”

The Facebook IPO: Does it matter to you?

January 28, 2012 Add Comment

The Facebook IPO draws nearer, and we break down why it should matter (or not) to you.

The Facebook IPO has been looming on the horizon for some time now. Recent speculation has increased the ever-building hype around the company’s S1 filing, and the latest rumors say that the process could begin as soon as Wednesday. According to the Wall Street Journal, insiders suggest as much and say the company is expected to raise somewhere between $75 and $100 billion.

Beyond the fact that this means some very fortunate people are about to become very, very rich, what does the Facebook IPO mean?

For users

Largely, a Facebook IPO means very little for users. The site will continue to serve the same purpose: no one is going to entirely uproot and change the site’s direction, and none of the long-harbored Facebook fears are going to come true. This includes, but is not limited to, users being able to see who has visited their profile and being forced to pay for Facebook.

Of course the company’s structure will change, and there are competing opinions about what the trickle-down effect will be. Yes, the site will become beholden to shareholders, and that could mean a very different governing attitude. When you have to answer to these people more, the way you make decisions inevitably has to change.

At the same time, Facebook is going to come into a lot of cash, and that could mean everything from features everyone’s been holding out on (the Facebook phone, a fully-fledged, built-in media dashboard) to little things, like server upgrades to improve the back-end.

But it’s not like Facebook didn’t have investors to answer to before, or didn’t have enough money to scoop up small startups to its pleasing. It’s just that the degree of both of these things will increase.

Sure, there are concerns that new pressures put on the site could lead to a sacrifice for user experience, or that Facebook could be overrun by its shareholders and become stagnant. These are long-term consequences, though, and apply to every company that goes public. We’re going to call them unlikely based on Facebook’s dependence on users and the fact that it’s probably learned from its predecessors’ mistakes.

For shareholders and employees

Of course the real winners of a Facebook IPO are the company’s shareholders. Early investors like Peter Thiel and Sean Parker will be handsomely rewarded for their insight, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg obviously stands to rake in quite a bit of cash. If Facebook is able to raise the projected $100 billion, then Zuckerberg will go home with $25 billion.

When a company IPOs, there’s a sort of rearrangement that happens, and that means the Facebook team will see some shake-up. Employees are shareholders (to varying degrees, depending on their roles within the company), so they stand to make money off of this move. Some of them have been waiting until Facebook IPOs so they could take the money and pursue their own startup.

For the market

This infusion of Facebook talent back into the market has its own effects. All these very talented people who decide to take their plans and will infuse some new innovation and ideas into the market. We’ve already seen Facebook employees like Dustin Moskovitz (co-founder of Asana) and Adam D’Angelo (founder of Quora) part ways with their former job to strike out on their own, and now some new veterans from within the company – who have some nice, new money – will do the same.

Advertisers will likely see the price of the Facebook Ads service increase. Facebook will have revenue goals it must meet to keep shareholders happy, and an easy way to do this is via its advertising platform. They will probably also be trying to drive business to it, with new features and controls for users. Expect to see the Open Graph fill out as well.

Let’s lump investors in with the market as well, since they are such a catalyst in its growth. Unfortunately, only an elite crowd will be able to get their hands on Facebook stock. If you’re interested in getting a piece prior to the IPO, unless you know someone with a share and they owe you a favor (on the scale of you once saved them from a burning building), you’re probably out of luck. We do advise checking out SecondMarket, where certain individuals can qualify as “accredited investors” and look for Facebook stock for sale. The odds still aren’t great, but it’s worth a shot. And after the fact, it will be trading so high and shares will go so fast that it will be hard for your average Joe to be a part of it all.

This system of successful companies going public later and later is what’s contributed to this: lots of popular and big startups would IPO earlier, and the public would be a part of their growth, and more hands were in the investment pot.

5 Steps to Unlimited Traffic from Facebook to Your Blog Free

December 20, 2011 Add Comment

Facebook is the most popular social networking site. You can use this site to get high level traffic machine. The built-in feature of Note application will give you mass search engine traffic to your blog. Once you have to add your blog with facebook notes, you can enjoy unlimited traffic. Here the 5 very easy steps to turn facebook traffic to your blog at free of cost.

Free Facebook Traffic to Your Blog

Log In to your Facebook account.
Type the following on your web browser “http://facebook.com/notes.php”
Click Edit import settings link (Under the subcribe section)
Now enter the RSS feeds URL of your blog.
Click Start Importing then hit Confirm button.

That’s it, Now you can see your blog post feed, retrieved by facebook. Here after automatically update your blog feeds in notes.
If write your personal notes with your blog description and keywords, you can get more traffic from it.

Click “Notes” link in the left side panel.
Complete the all detail like title, description, keywords,
Publish it

Facebook ready to take on mobile ad network?

December 14, 2011 Add Comment

Facebook may finally be ready to get into the mobile ad space.
The social-networking giant plans a version of Sponsored Stories that would appear in mobile users' News Feeds by the end of March, sources "with knowledge of the matter" told Bloomberg.
The company had been expected to roll out a mobile advertising service earlier this year, and this planned foray might still be shelved as well, Bloomberg's sources cautioned.
Facebook representatives declined to comment on the report.
Despite being late to the party, Facebook already has access to data of a large mobile user base that could help advertisers more accurately target potential customers than a mobile browser or app. Facebook says nearly half of its nearly 800 million users already log in via mobile devices, giving the network momentum in a market estimated to be worth $630 million.
However, Facebook will have to contend with Google's Admob, Millennial Media's ad network, and Apple's iAd, the latter of which has reportedly run into obstacles that forced it to offer more attractive terms to advertisers. But the fact that Facebook's mobile apps are already among the most popular on Google and Apple's mobile platforms should resonate with advertisers.
The effort could bring more cash to company coffers as it plans its IPO. Facebook, which is already expected to record $4.27 billion for fiscal 2011, is widely expected to go public between April and June 2012 with a $10 billion offering that values the company at $100 billion.

Zynga Builds Its CastleVille Walls, As Its Facebook Traffic Flattens And Falls

November 28, 2011 Add Comment

New Facebook game CastleVille is one of Zynga’s fastest-growing titles ever, as it announced a few days ago. That’s good news for the company, but maybe not good enough when you consider the trajectory of most of its other games on Facebook — and its plans for an initial public offering as soon as this coming week.
After launching in the middle of November, the medieval role-playing simulation title has grown to 6.9 million daily active users today, currently the third-highest out of any Zynga game on Facebook.
Overall, the developer has a total of 49.5 million daily actives on Facebook, according to Inside Network’s AppData application tracking service. It’s still by far the largest of any Facebook developer, but it has been falling from its peaks in previous months and years. Up until CastleVille launched, its games had been drifting down over the last 30 days from 48.2 million DAU.
And bigger picture, the company’s Facebook DAU had been 59 million in the second quarter, and had already fallen to 54 million in the third. In previous amendments to its filing, Zynga had said these changes were due “to a decline in players of our more mature games and a limited number of new game launches in the first nine months of 2011.”

DAU is crucial because it indicates how addicted players are. This daily addiction is what leads some fraction of the players to buy virtual goods — the model that drives the social gaming business.
So, CastleVille has a lot of growing left to do if it’s going to bring back or replace all these former users. It’s certainly off to a good start.

But by picking through the other 30-day AppData sets for Zynga’s other largest Facebook titles, you can see that most of its other games are declining. Zynga has had exceptional success at keeping its games popular with users over the months and years, but it is not immune from natural churn, nor from unsuccessful launches.
CityVille, its year-old city builder title and biggest game by DAU, has gone from 12.1 million to 10.8 million in the past four weeks.

Its farming sim from 2009, FarmVille, is down by half a million, to 7 million today.

Texas Hold’Em, Zynga’s first hit (and an amazingly perennial one at that), has fallen below CastleVille, to 6.3 million DAU.

Empires & Allies, launched in June, has also fallen by half a million.

Other new titles are also not looking too healthy. Adventure World, which launched in September, is down by almost one million DAU.

And Mafia Wars 2, the big new version of its long-standing RPG hit launched just last month, is now down by half.

CastleVille isn’t Zynga’s only success story now. The developer has been making big gains on mobile in the past year, culminating with an increase of more than a million DAU in October for an average total of 11.1 million DAU across iOS, Android and mobile web apps, as Inside Mobile Apps spotted in the filings. That success has been led by Words With Friends, which has continued to grow this month.

CastleVille appears to be getting at least some resources that had been supporting other recent launches. Zynga has traditionally grown traffic through clever combinations of tactics including many smaller iterations within games, large-scale advertising on Facebook, aggressive use of Facebook’s social channels, and launches of new games and expansions that it can direct players to when they get tired of older games.
Regarding Mafia Wars and Adventure World’s especially distinct falls, Zynga has cut off recent launches before — like for Poker Blitz, which you’ve probably never heard of.
There’s also a more specific issue that Zynga faces with cross-promotion, that has mattered more and more as its players — mostly people who don’t consider themselves “gamers” — get more sophisticated. As my former colleague AJ Glasser observes in a great analysis piece over on Inside Social Games, when people playing one game eventually get bored, they might not find a suitable replacement in Zynga’s stable.
The company’s stakes are higher than ever, with ongoing rumors of its initial public offering pegging the date for as early as this coming week. Investors want a growth story. Zynga does have that in terms of revenue, as its recent filings show. It has been figuring out how to steadily make more money per user over the years.
But it also needs to show that it can keep gaining new users without losing too many old ones. CastleVille will need to show a strong growth streak over the next few months if it’s going to head into CityVille territory, and address its larger traffic concerns.

Zynga CEO to Employees: We’re a Meritocracy

November 11, 2011 Add Comment

After an article in the Wall Street Journal suggested Zynga has been demanding that some employees surrendered stock options they were previously granted, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus sent a memo to employees, claiming the article paints the company in a “false and skewed light”.
In the note, obtained by Fortune, Pincus says dismisses WSJ’s claims, calling Zynga a “meritocracy” which has been built in an “ethical and fair way”.
“The wall street journal posted a story last night (copied below) which paints our meritocracy in a false and skewed light. The story is based on hearsay and innuendo which is disappointing but is to be expected as we move towards becoming a public company,” says Pincus in the note.
WSJ’s story claims that Zynga has decided that some employees have too many unvested shares, asking them to return a portion of them back or be fired. Fortune has another take on the story, claiming that Zynga’s management is well within its rights to “punish” employees who haven’t been performing up to the company’s standards by asking them to surrender unvested shares, basically describing the practice as cutting the employee’s pay.
It’s definitely an unusual practice, and one likely to raise controversy, especially before the company’s IPO. After it goes public, Zynga will likely have to implement clear and transparent rules and regulations on how it rewards – and punishes – the “citizens” of its meritocracy.
Zynga’s long-awaited initial public offering is due mid-November, with the company hoping to raise between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, at a valuation close to $20 billion.