Facebook’s total monthly active users and daily active users continued to trend upward in the first quarter of 2013, reaching 1.11 billion and 665 million, respectively, as of March 31, but growth in the core markets of the U.S. and Canada has slowed considerably, with the bulk of new MAUs and DAUs coming from Asia and the rest of the world, not including Europe.
Lisa Raphael (left), the social media producer at Katie Couric's daytime talk show Katie, is one of our featured speakers in Mediabistro's upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, an online event and workshop starting June 6, 2013. Lisa will share a case study on how the hit show uses Twitter to build interest and buzz around upcoming segments. Learn more about our our twelve event speakers and register here. 
Hello Social, a startup from Canada, announced recently that it has launched its service aimed at helping marketers on Facebook and other social media sites create engaging promotional content. Through Hello Social’s application programming interface (API), brands can create promotions through websites, mobile apps, and social networks such as Facebook.
Local businesses are thriving on Facebook, according to statistics released Friday by Dan Levy, director of small business at the social network, who said more than 2 billion connections exist on Facebook between users and local businesses, adding that approximately 70 percent of monthly active users in the U.S. and Canada are connected to local businesses.
Facebook’s Gifts feature is slowly starting to go global, as readers of sister blog Inside Facebook located in the U.K., Canada, and India reported the ability to send gifts to their friends, but only to friends in the U.S.
Voice-over-Internet-protocol calling has made its way across the pond for Facebook Messenger users, as the social network updated its iOS version of the app in the U.K. to allow users there to make free VoIP calls.
Facebook will set up a temporary office in Vancouver, British Columbia, where it will conduct “boot camps” to train recent software engineering graduates for full-time positions with the social network, according to a report in The Vancouver Sun.
Facebook continues to wage war with the call features of cell phones by introducing VoIP (voice-over-Internet-protocol) and voice features. This time, the social network’s latest update to the Messenger application for Android includes free calling for Canadian users. With this update, Facebook also introduced deeper group messaging options.
Facebook released an update to its iOS application, version 5.5, and the main addition is the ability to make free calls if both users are located in the U.S. or Canada, which the social network added to its Messenger app in January.
Since 2010, PayPal has been one of the main methods of payment for Facebook developers. But as Facebook grows, the company is changing its PayPal policies for new developers in emerging markets, such as China, Brazil, and India. According to TechCrunch, developers in several countries must show extra identification as a means of authentication, such as photo IDs or incorporation papers, in order to be paid via direct deposit.
Facebook offered more details on how its users interacted with Monday’s inauguration of President Barack Obama, revealing that the event scored a 7.1 out of 10 on its Talk Meter scale.
