Facebook announced Friday that it is making offers available to Android users. In April, Facebook made mobile offers available to iOS users. Facebook pointed out that these offers posts will have a simplified layout with larger images and clear call-to-action buttons (get offer/shop now). Facebook also said users will have more control over whether or not they want to share offer page posts.
Facebook is appealing a ruling made last year over a dispute regarding a Facebook like as free and protected speech. After a Virginia sheriff’s office employee liked the Facebook page of his boss’ political opponent, resulting in a post on the News Feed, the man lost his job. Daniel Ray Carter, along with five other people fired from the Hampton, Va., sheriff’s department, then filed a lawsuit claiming that likes on Facebook are free speech. A judge dismissed Carter’s claims in April 2012, but Facebook is keeping the fight alive.
Myriad reports have said that Facebook has a problem with teen users eschewing the site for social networks such as Tumblr. A few sources have reported Friday that Yahoo may be trying to purchase Tumblr, but Facebook could also be in these discussions, as well. According to AllThingsD, Yahoo is rumored to be willing to pay up to $1 billion to purchase Tumblr, but Forbes and GigaOM think that Facebook could swoop in and add the blogging site. However, it’s unlikely that Facebook will get the chance.
On May 18, 2012, Facebook became a publicly traded company. Facebook’s stock has had some definite peaks and valleys since then. The value of the company has yet to reach its opening mark of $38 per share, settling in the $26-$28 neighborhood. MarketWatch compiled a timeline of Facebook’s year after the initial public offering.
Many of Facebook’s more than 1 billion monthly active users would agree — the site is great, but could use some improvement. As users complain about ads, a cluttered and confusing interface, and several other things, there are a few things that Facebook could implement to make the site much more palatable. Here are five innovations (some possible, some rather imaginative) that we think would improve Facebook.
Facebook recently wondered if younger married women were more apt to keep or change their last names after marriage (at least on Facebook). The company’s data science team found that women in their 20s were the most likely to keep their maiden names, while women in their 30s and 40s hyphenated their last names more often than others.
While there have been two unofficial Facebook applications for Google Glass, Google announced Thursday at its I/O conference that an official Facebook app is coming to the high-tech specs. It will allow Google Glass owners to instantly share photos to their Facebook accounts.
To build the redesigned News Feed, Facebook designers quarantined themselves into a plush living room-style office with a live feed of users testing out the new product. They didn’t really have a set plan, other than making the user experience simpler and better. Two designers recently spoke with Taxi, a site celebrating design, about the experience of creating the new Facebook News Feed.
Recommendations are a huge part of Graph Search. When users seek restaurants or bookstores their friends have liked, Facebook shows the average amount of stars their friends have assigned when rating those places. Previously, star ratings were available only through mobile and through random sidebar polling, but Inside Facebook noticed that Facebook recently added the ability to visit pages from desktop and rate them.
Wondering if your Facebook page is doing OK? Quintly recently released its report on average Facebook page performance in April. The infographic breaks page performance down in terms of size, so page administrators are not comparing pages for mom-and-pop stores with those with 3 million fans.
