Google is under fire in the UK for its tax practices in the country, and a new key witness (who spoke to The Sunday Times) might put them in deeper hot water when he hands over a reported 100,000 emails and documents to the British Revenue & Customs (HRMC) services. Barney Jones, a former Googler who was at the company between 2004 and 2006, says he has material proof that Google’s London… → Read More
$FB is still stuck at $26.25, way down from its $38 IPO price, but it’s made important progress since going public a year ago. Daily users up 26%, mobile monthly users up 56%, and revenue up 38% are some highlights. It’s running out of people to sign up in the developed world, but with this growth and no serious competitor in sight, it’s survived its hardest year yet. → Read More
Google and Facebook working together? They’re actually friends, in no small part thanks to Erick Tseng. The former Android leader, now Facebook’s head of mobile, today launched the official Facebook For Glass app. Here he tells me about how a tiny team designed the app around simple photo sharing, and Facebook’s strengthening relationship with Google. → Read More
Facebook is hoping to give developers a better way to get discovered and improve Graph Search. So today it announced it’s finished rolling out “Sections” for Timeline that show what apps you use, which people now add 200 million items to daily. New features coming alongside the rollout include the ability for users to rate different types of media and for developers to track traffic from Sections. → Read More
We wrote about an app for Google Glass that let you share photos to Facebook, but another one has come out that has a way more interesting feature, the ability to create status messages or comment on on the social network with the sound of your voice. → Read More
If you want a digital detox, you’re going to have to pull the trigger yourself. Social Roulette is an app that would delete one in six users’ Facebook account data, but its founder confirms it’s been blocked by Facebook so it no longer functions. While there’s no specific policy prohibiting apps from deleting your data, Social Roulette is clearly counter to Facebook’s mission and business model. → Read More
Facebook didn’t realize just how important widgets, docks, and app folders were to Android users, and that leaving them out of Home was a huge mistake. That’s because some of the Facebookers who built and tested Home normally carry iPhones, I’ve confirmed. Lack of “droidfooding” has left Facebook scrambling to add these features, whose absence have led Home to just 1 million downloads in a month. → Read More
Facebook Home, the app which CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted as the “next version of Facebook,” has not been an immediate hit. Its Google Play rankings have been dropping steadily after the launch buzz wore off, according to new data from top app store analytics firms. Despite having an active user base of over a billion on the social network itself, the company announced on Thursday that… → Read More
“House Of Cards” proved that great, exclusive content can create loyal customers. While Facebook isn’t about to produce TV shows, it tells me that it plans to ramp up production of its Facebook Live original programming starting with a talk with Star Trek celebrities today at 5:15 p.m. PST. Comedian Andy Samberg will interview film director JJ Abrams and classic cast member and social media maven… → Read More
“Home is the first product we’ve released that’s really about ‘mobile-best’ and the transition beyond ‘mobile first’” said Facebook’s Cory Ondrejka. To further that, Facebook previewed some new features Home will get eventually including a “Dash Bar” buddy list for starting chats, an improved “Dock” for your favorite apps, and a better “new user experience” onboarding flow. → Read More
Facebook appears to be close to making another billion-dollar acquisition to once again ramp up its mobile efforts: according to three reports in the Israeli press at Calcalist and sister publication Ynet and The Marker (all in Hebrew), Facebook has approached Waze, the social mapping and traffic app maker, and is now in advanced due dilligence on a deal that Calcalist puts at between $800… → Read More
Facebook may be trying to sweeten the deal to get Home into more hands, or AT&T and HTC might just want their money. But for some reason, the Facebook Phone aka the HTC First’s price has dropped from $99 to $0.99 on contract less than a month after its debut. Considering it comes with unbloated stock Android and a speedy LTE connection, that could be a bargain. → Read More
Are You Interested has been in the online dating game since 2007, predominantly focused on the Facebook platform as a way to connect people through the internet. The company has been relatively quiet in the past year, but is now speaking up after launching a new feature in the past few weeks that connects you with friends of friends. Other online dating startups have added similar features —… → Read More
Cisco Meraki has launched a new service called Presence that provides data about mobile behavior across location and automatic login to wireless hotspots using a person’s Facebook account. → Read More
“Where did my Android go?” is the common theme of Facebook Home reviews in Google Play. People want the widgets and old homescreen they meticulously curated. Facebook needs to preserve and offer quick access to the phone we’re used to if it’s going to make Home a hit. Facebook’s reading the reviews too, so bet on the early Home updates to make it more of a bonus than a trade-off. → Read More
As the days go by and developers get their hands on Glass, the basic apps that we need to survive in the wild and share our photos are popping up. Today, Glass To Facebook is available for those who want to post the moments captured with Glass to the social network. It’s the first third-party app that allows you The setup is similar to that of other third-party apps like GlassTweet, but… → Read More
Parse, the mobile back-end startup that Facebook recently bought to set up a new developer-focused business, just launched hosting. It’s meant to help mobile developers that have a desktop web presence or companion experience on the web. The acquisition has already given Parse a boost, with the number of apps it hosts up 33% since the deal was announced. → Read More
When you’re spreading like wildfire, why douse the flames to make a few bucks? Facebook’s willingness to wait on advertising helped its site and mobile apps grow massive, and now it’s applying the same strategy to Instagram. Wall Street is clamoring for Facebook to earn back the $700+ million it spent buying the photo app, but Mark Zuckerberg refuses to trade tomorrow’s dollars for today’s dimes. → Read More
BeTheDancer is Alex Greenburg’s name and handle on Instagram. He’s a good friend and a brilliant photographer, but because Instagram doesn’t require real names, I had a lot trouble using the app’s new tagging feature to point him out in my photos. Right now, Instagram’s 100 million users are discovering that while pseudoanonymity can be fun, it’s not very functional. → Read More
Facebook says that there are no plans for now to add advertising to Instagram, even though advertisers are approaching them, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today during the company’s Q1 earnings call. But adding ads could end up stunting Instagram’s rapid growth. He said, more than once during the call, that Instagram is currently growing at a faster rate than FB did at the same age, and it now has 100… → Read More
It appears that as people switch from the desktop where Facebook shows multiple ads per page to mobile, Facebook is earning less ad revenue per user in its most important markets. While user growth helped total revenue increase, in the US and Canada Facebook earned $2.85 on ads per user (ads ARPU) in Q1, down from $3.30 in the holiday Q4 2012, but also down from $2.87 in Q3. Another important stat… → Read More
Almost one-third of Facebook’s advertising revenue is now coming from mobile platforms, according to the company’s latest earnings release. About $375 million of Facebook’s $1.25 billion in advertising revenue came from products like the company’s new mobile app install ads. That’s up from last quarter, when Facebook said it made 23 percent, or $305.9 million, from… → Read More
In Q4 of last year, Facebook’s mobile MAUs surpassed desktop for the first time in its history. That trend continued in Q1 2013 with 751M MAUs. This is what we learned with today’s release of Facebook’s Q1 results. Despite claims earlier this month, Facebook didn’t lose users, but gained 2M. Asia continues to be the largest area of user growth, according to the slides… → Read More
Facebook has just posted its earnings for the quarter that ended March 31, 2013. Facebook hit $1.46 billion in revenue up 38% from Q1 2012, beating Wall Street estimates of sales of $1.44 billion. Facebook reported earnings of $1.06 billion for the same quarter a year ago. Earnings per shared missed estimates, staying flat at $0.12 (analysts had expected earnings per share of $0.13. Net income… → Read More
Brian Pokorny, who recently rejoined SV Angel as a general partner, weighed in this afternoon on the future of a number of high-profile companies — Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo.
Pokorny was interviewed at Disrupt NY, where he was joined onstage by his partners David Lee and Ron Conway. When TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington asked them how they felt about Facebook and whether it was going… → Read More
A victory for Facebook in its case against typosquatters — those who own domain names that are similar to those of a popular site, which they use to confuse people and potentially capitalize on that. The U.S. District Court for Northern California has ruled in favor of the social network in an action it took against several squatters, recommending the turnover of 105 domains and statutory damages… → Read More
How do you get hundreds of millions of people to consider downloading your app? One of the only answers is Facebook’s app install ads. With the app stores overrun and every company going mobile, app install ads are Facebook’s big chance to monetize mobile. Companies like 1-800-Flowers and Poshmark say the ads are already a hit, and I think they could be the star of Facebook’s earnings tomorrow. → Read More
Lars Rasmussen, one of the two engineering directors who led in the creation of Facebook’s new Graph Search and helps run its development, is leaving Menlo Park and setting up shop in Facebook’s office in London. Graph Search, or at least the engineering part that he oversees, is coming with him. I took the opportunity of a quick reconnaissance mission he made to the city this week to ask… → Read More
Despite developers grumbling that they would ditch Parse’s mobile app backend service now that it’s been bought by Facebook, Parse CEO Ilya Suhkar tells me signups spiked 9.4x and fewer clients are leaving than before. Meanwhile, to calm fears about Facebook spying on Parse app data, the company issued the statement “We currently have no plans to make any changes to how Parse app data is used.” → Read More
Some developers got very angry and threatened to leave mobile app backend platform Parse when it was bought by Facebook yesterday. Hoping to capitalize, competitor StackMob has since released a Parse migration tool that makes it easy for devs to import their Parse apps. It’s a cutthroat game, this game of tech. When the Parse acquisition was announced, disgruntled developers flocked to… → Read More
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