
The Open Compute Project, which was started by Facebook in an effort to devise more efficient methods of data storage, announced the opening of its second international chapter, in Taiwan, joining the OCP chapter in Japan.

The Open Compute Project, which was started by Facebook in an effort to devise more efficient methods of data storage, announced the opening of its second international chapter, in Taiwan, joining the OCP chapter in Japan.

Facebook Monday announced several updates to its page post link ads, including the ability for brands to customize images, the ability to create these units directly via the social network’s self-serve ad-creation tool, and the ability to choose between right-hand-side domain ads and unpublished page post link ads (dark posts) in the News Feed.

Page post ads in Facebook’s News Feed are becoming the ad unit of choice for marketers on the social network, mainly due to their return on investment performance, according to a study released Monday by Facebook advertising platform Nanigans.

From cat videos to “The Harlem Shake,” the 2012 social election is all but a distant memory, as Republican candidates are taking to Facebook in new and creative ways to stay one step ahead of the competition in the 2014 cycle.

Small business owners comparing the environment today versus that of five years ago feel that the rise of Facebook and other social networks has been both a plus and a minus, making running their businesses more complicated, but offering them easier, inexpensive ways to market, according to a survey released Monday by engagement marketing firm Constant Contact.

Continuing its efforts to promote its Gifts feature, the spot toward the top-right-hand corner of Facebook’s News Feed that previously alerted users about friends’ birthdays now alerts users about upcoming birthdays when none of their friends has a birthday on that particular day.

For the six months ending Dec. 31, 2012, Facebook received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data from U.S. government entities at all levels, local and national, related to between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts, outgoing Facebook General Counsel Ted Ullyot revealed in a release on Facebook’s Newsroom.

Take a close look at Social Gaming Network’s story, and you will see how social games are evolving away from a focus on Facebook-only games. SGN is rising as a multiplatform social game developer, while Facebook-focused Zynga has been declining rapidly. SGN is even hiring the talent that was laid off by Zynga.

Earlier this month, hundreds of social media leaders gathered together at the AllFacebook Marketing Conference in San Francisco to take a closer look at Facebook’s recent innovations, as well as to share best practices and tactics to better navigate the ever-changing social network.

Facebook’s Open Graph is a popular stop on the itinerary of travel reviews site TripAdvisor, which said engagement on its site is 27 percent higher from users of the social network, adding that one out of three new reviews are posted by users signing in with login with Facebook.