Facebook doesn’t own a mobile operating system, and that’s a problem. Developers don’t need Facebook to build apps, and it doesn’t get a 30% cut of payments. But today Facebook acquired Parse, and while it’s not an OS, it’s the next best thing. The mobile-backend-as-a-service could keep Facebook top-of-mind for developers when they pick an identity provider, integrate sharing, and buy ads. → Read More
Datalogix’s offline purchase data is the not-so-secret weapon giant publishers use to target their ads, and measure if they boost consumer spending. Businesses like Facebook are becoming dependent on this ROI data, allowing Datalogix to raise a $25 million Series B. Since its based in Denver you don’t hear a lot about Datalogix, but the 250 employee startup is crucial to the future of advertising. → Read More
Facebook’s gotten into trouble over the years for auto-sharing e-commerce activity. Determined to avoid another Beacon fiasco or scare people away from offers they don’t want to tell friends about, Facebook now lets you choose to privately claim an offer rather than automatically share the news to friends. Facebook tells me Offers, which let brands post coupons, is getting other new features too. → Read More
Search advertising became such a popular and lucrative juggernaut because it offered businesses the ability to reach and persuade people with true purchase intent. But now keyword targeting is available on Twitter and Facebook, which could loosen Google’s stranglehold on ads that convince us what to buy. → Read More
Nokia has announced another handset in its S40-based Asha portfolio of low end mobiles which compete with the budget end of Android and cheap BlackBerrys. The 2G-plus-Wi-Fi Asha 210, due to ship before the end of Q2 costing $72 (before taxes), has a dedicated hardware key on the front that short-cuts to messaging app Whatsapp. A second variant, intended for separate markets, has a Facebook key. → Read More
People go to Yelp for reviews, but also for phone numbers, addresses, and hours. Facebook wants that traffic, so today it rolled out a global redesign of mobile Pages that features details about local businesses, star ratings, and buttons to Like, Call, or Check-In to them up top. Facebook tells me this is the first “truly mobile-first” redesign, with no immediately scheduled parallel web makeover → Read More
Do you target kids with cheap ads or more expensive adults? Nanigans has just raised a $5.85 million “Series A.1″ from Avalon Ventures to build SaaS technology that predicts which audiences earn advertisers more money. With revenue up 6x in 18 months, Nanigans hopes to keep up with Facebook’s progress by pouring its funding into R&D. It’s already discovered a surprising trick to supercharging… → Read More
It would appear that Facebook Home has just surpassed 500k downloads on Google Play since launching on the platform five days ago on April 16. The app’s Google Play listing notes the milestone, and Ben Evans confirmed on Twitter.
Facebook Home isn’t so much of an app as a user interface for the phone, putting Facebook smack dab in the center of Android user’s smartphone experience. Users with… → Read More
Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer and Director of Engineering Jocelyn Goldfein spoke at the she++ conference today, making Facebook by far the most represented company at the Stanford conference.
Their public remarks and comments shed light on Facebook’s aggressive strategy to recruit talented engineers to join their “deep bench” — the company’s greatest asset… → Read More
“Success Theater” means only sharing an idealized version of yourself where you’re always happy. Now a bug in Facebook’s new mood sharing feature is taking that concept way too literally. Select that you’re “Unhappy” and Facebook adds a smiley face to your post instead of a frown emoticon. → Read More
Facebook has given its main “f” logo icon a makeover, flattening the design by removing the pale blue bar along the bottom, which gave the icon a reflective sheen/slight 3D effect, as well as moving the position of the f so it now bleeds right off the bottom. The overall effect is a simplified, unfussy and clean looking design with the f more clearly leaping out. → Read More
Hello Social is a new Toronto-based startup launching today, with the aim of improving the amount of useful data captured from online social media marketing campaigns. The startup, co-founded by design professional Dominik Dryja and technical lead Barek Nowotarski, provides tools for companies looking to run campaigns like contests on platforms like Facebook, or via their own web properties, and… → Read More
Facebook today unveiled three new products at its Mobile Developer Conference in NYC that will put the company on an even faster track to becoming a mobile-first platform. The company announced Open Graph mobile, which takes Facebook’s social graphing product to the mobile platform for the first time. Facebook is also improving Login via mobile, and releasing a new Facebook SDK 3.5 for iOS. → Read More
“FBX was my baby that I staked everything on. We shipped it fast, scaled it up, and now the baby talks and can walk to school, but I don’t feel I need to babysit it,” says Antonio Garcia-Martinez, product director of Facebook’s ad exchange who announced he’s leaving the company today. After selling his company AdGrok to Twitter, then defecting to Facebook two years ago, Antonio deserves a… → Read More
Following its beta launch at the end of January, just.me, the mobile messaging startup from Keith Teare, co-founder of TechCrunch and partner at incubator Archimedes Labs, has launched its first app, available initially for iPhones and iPod Touch. Just.me had planned on an earlier release of the app but said today it held back so it could launch at DEMO Mobile to garner more attention. → Read More
The Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and among the winners was the staff of The Denver Post for its coverage of the Aurora, Colo., shootings last summer – coverage in which Twitter and Facebook (and to a lesser extent, Storify) played a big role.
At this point, it’s so obvious that it seems almost silly to note that social media plays a role in how reporters break stories. However, it also… → Read More
Facebook is taking a step today in its bid to position itself as the privacy-respecting social network: it is announcing an alliance with the U.S.’s National Association of Attorneys General to provide teens and their parents more information and tools to manage their profiles on Facebook and beyond to counter its less flattering image as a “ever-expanding data collection octopus.” → Read More
If you’re an iPhone user, you might be feeling a little left behind, because Facebook launched an application called Facebook Home, touted by CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the “next version of Facebook.” In fact, you might be feeling this way if you’re an Android user, too. For now, only a handful of select devices can even run Home (officially) — notably missing from the lineup is Google’s Nexus 4, the… → Read More
In case you happened to miss the furor earlier today (or yesterday, depending on your timezone), Facebook officially pushed its Facebook Home launcher into the Google Play Store for owners of a select few devices to muck around with. Early impressions seem to run the gamut, but unless you had the right hardware you were plumb out of luck if you wanted to take Home for a spin.
Well, let me… → Read More
This week on the TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast we talk about the launch of Facebook Fone and my own horrible attempts at becoming a bitcoin billionaire. → Read More
Just 3 percent of small business ad spend goes online right now, but that’s going to change, and Facebook wants to become these merchants’ channel of choice. There are already 2 billion connections between people and small businesses on Facebook, and their Pages get 645 million views and 13 million comments a week, Facebook announced today. The challenge for Facebook is now educating moms and… → Read More
Facebook Home is due out today and will likely arrive soon, but the standalone Messenger app update is already here, and it brings Chat Heads support to most Android devices, regardless of whether or not you have Home installed. That means that when you’re using other apps or on the home screen, Messenger messages will pop up with the Chat Head icon of the person messaging you, allowing you to… → Read More
While Facebook is building out a bolder role in mobile in the form of Facebook Home, it looks like it is also continuing to make acquisitions that will help bolster that strategy overall. We have learned that in the lead-up to the launch last week, the social network appears to have quietly picked up Osmeta, a Mountain View-based mobile software startup. Osmeta had yet to launch a commercial… → Read More
Teens still love Facebook. No news there. According to a recent study by Piper Jaffray, 33 percent of the 5,200 teens surveyed choose Facebook as their most important social network. Following behind, Twitter has 30 percent of the vote, while 17 percent of teens say that Instagram is the most important social network. What’s notable, however, is that interest in Facebook seems to be… → Read More
Facebook today is taking another step ahead in its ad targeting strategy, which serves users advertising based on their location and online purchasing and browsing histories. The social network is launching partner categories: some 500 “unique groups”, with more to come, which are descriptors (one example: “buyers of children’s cereals”) that match up with relevant people among Facebook’s 1… → Read More
Why trust one reviewer to tell you what phone to buy? Better to get a consensus, and across reviews by seven leading publications the verdict is that the HTC First features a stylish yet casual design, efficient messaging, reliable battery, and an addictive feed-reading experience. But its “apperating system” is confusing, the camera fails in low light, it sacrifices widgets, and has privacy… → Read More
“This is not a Facebook Phone.” Yeah, whatever. The HTC First is the first phone that has Facebook partnering up with an OEM to bake an Android pie with Facebook Home filling, so I’m calling it the Facebook Phone. There will be more. This is just the first. And guess what?
It’s really good. → Read More
After years of rumors, the Facebook Phone aka the HTC First finally launches April 12th for $99 on AT&T. It’s light and supple, plus comes with a suped-up version of Facebook Home pre-installed that pipes in non-Facebook notifications, but the 5MP Camera is a let down. If you’re highly social, want a mid-range handset, crave email alerts, and aren’t a photo buff, the First could be a great… → Read More
It could make us more willing to express how we feel. Or you could say it over-simplies our complex moods and lives. But today the Facebook status update box began offering the option to “share how you’re feeling or what you’re doing” through a drop-down menu of emoticons and media. We’re entering a more structured era of communication, where both friends and big data know exactly how we tick. → Read More
While visiting, and judging, the Photo Hack Day at Facebook headquarters yesterday, one of the more than 60 hacks presented in a two-minute format was iMaze. The team that put it together in just a little over a day was comprised of developers, some of whom were high-school students, and it ended up being one of the most polished apps coming out of the hackathon. With Aviary and Facebook putting… → Read More
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