Facebook Updates iOS App With Voice Messages, Video Recording And Sharing

 

Facebook yesterday updated its iOS app to version 5.4, giving users a few new features in what could be one of the world’s most complex and layered mobile apps.
The update brings with it the ability to share voice messages, much like iOS’s Voice Memos, letting users record a cute little message and send it through the app to friends. The update also lets users record and share video from right within the app.
Facebook users have long had the ability to send 60-second voice messages within Facebook’s Messenger app, but the functionality has been brought over to the main app.
Users can send a voice message by tapping the plus button under the Messages tab. From there, click Record and simply hold the button to record your message. When you release, your message will be automatically sent unless you slide your finger off the button, in which case the message will be canceled.
Along with video and voice functionality, Facebook has also improved Places support on the app’s Nearby tab, letting users check in with a bit more accuracy.
Facebook has struggled on mobile, but there have been clear improvements in the past year. The company has introduced various mobile apps like Poke, Messenger, and Camera, while still making clear progress on the main Facebook app. In fact, Zuckerberg believes that mobile is where the money is.
The update is available for free in the App Store.

Credit : Tech Crunch

Russian Giant Yandex Has Secretly Built A Killer Facebook Search Engine App Codenamed “Wonder

Yandex, the Google of Russia, has built a voice-activated visual search engine for Facebook. Codenamed “Wonder,” the mobile app lets people ask what businesses friends have visited and what content they’ve consumed, sources confirm. The question is if Facebook will permit the app. Its policy prohibits use of its data in search engines without permission, and Wonder resembles Facebook “Nearby.”
I talked to multiple industry sources who’ve seen Wonder first-hand or currently have a build of it on their iOS device (though an Android version may have been developed, too). The logo you see above is my attempt at an artist rendition of what sources say an early version of the app’s logo looked like. One source said Wonder is “about more than Facebook” which means it could pull in more traditional search results, or just make use of data from the partners I detail below.
A Yandex spokesperson said Yandex “can’t confirm and can’t comment” on Wonder. However, they did admit that “Yandex is working on mining social data. We are building social products.” It also noted it would have an announcement to make on that front in the coming weeks or months, which could certainly be a reveal of Wonder.
Here’s a rundown of how an alpha version of Wonder worked, but note that some design and partnership details may change if it’s released.

Welcome To Wonder

Wonder users can search using voice for things such as “restaurants in Los Angeles my friends have visited.” A horizontal, tile-by-tile scrolling interface lets them view one at a time the restaurants where their Facebook friends have taken photos or checked in. Wonderers can also type to search instead of using voice, or ask to see where a specific friend has gone.
Clicking on a business shows a horizontal stream of photos and recommendations of that place posted by their friends. Another tap brings up Foursquare-powered venue info such as a map, address, and phone number.
Wonder isn’t just for local businesses like Facebook’s recently launched “Nearby” feature built by the acquired Gowalla team. Wonder can pull up music that friends have listened to, let you learn about artists thanks to Last.fm-powered profiles, or preview or buy songs from iTunes. There’s a news discovery component, too. You can see news articles recently read by all your friends or a specific friend and read them within the app through an internal browser.

Yandex’s Passport To The USA

Yandex has largely limited itself to Russia and Russian-speaking markets over the years — a market where it is currently the largest search provider. But its share in its home market has come down and been hovering around 60 percent in the last year with competition from Google and others, so it is turning to growth elsewhere.
Just as Google has extended into mobile to expand the potential footprint for its advertising network, Yandex has done the same.
Chief among those efforts have been Yandex’s moves in mobile. A little over a year ago, it bought a company called SPB Software, which develops cross-platform mobile applications and user interfaces.
Some of projects SPB may have helped Yandex with include apps discovery for music, business listings, taxi services (similar to Uber, with a very popular app in Moscow) and more (this Google Play list includes apps for movie listings, ecommerce, Yandex’s Dropbox-like app Yandex.disc, and Yandex.market for ‘personal shopping’ ). In fact, you could think of these as a composite for some of the features of Wonder.
Perhaps most important of all, are Yandex’s location-based and mapping efforts. Yandex’s maps have replaced Google on iOS devices in Russia, and it also provides the search (but not native maps) on Windows Phone devices in the country. These location-based services might just be Yandex’s passport out of Russia (or so it hopes).

Yandex’s Dream, Facebook’s Nightmare?

So Wonder sounds great, especially compared to Facebook’s internal search engine, which is glaringly deficient. There’s no way to search for news read by friends, searching an artist’s name in the music category returns zero results, and if you figure out how to use the Places tab to search for restaurants, you’re met with standard-looking search results. Finding photos or recommendations of businesses from your friends is tough.

Facebook tried to fix some of this with Nearby, and did a pretty good job with the business search. Built into a tab in Facebook’s primary mobile apps, Nearby shows you places friends have been, Liked, or recommended. It took a browse-by-category approach to minimizing mobile typing, in contrast to Wonder’s focus on voice commands. However, Nearby doesn’t surface photos taken by friends at places yet, and it might be better off as a standalone app rather than being buried in Facebook for iOS and Android’s navigation.
The problem is that Yandex’s Wonder may be a bit too great and employ too much of Facebook’s data. In May, Facebook updated its Platform Policies to include the statement “You must not include data obtained from us in any search engine or directory without our written permission.” Facebook tells me this was designed to keep your friends from volunteering your private information to public search engines. But Wonder could definitely be interpreted as a search engine, especially considering its built by Yandex, and the policy doesn’t only apply to private data.
In fact, Facebook apparently learned that Yandex was developing Wonder around the time it changed its policy, and the line could have been added to protect Facebook’s future endeavors in search from invaders like Yandex. Therefore, Wonder might get its public Facebook data access shut down if it doesn’t have permission, and I’ve heard Yandex is actually worried this will happen pre- or post-launch.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself explained at TechCrunch Disrupt SF that Facebook is getting into search:
“Search is interesting. I think search engines are really evolving to give you a set of answers…’I have this specific question, answer this question for me’. Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have. ‘What sushi restaurants have my friends gone to in New York in the last six months and Liked?’ These are questions that you could potentially do at Facebook if we built out this system that you couldn’t do anywhere else. And at some point we’ll do it. We have a team working on search.”
Facebook Nearby, since it launched, could answer that sushi question, but so could Wonder thanks to Facebook’s data. With local business discovery comes lots of opportunity for monetization through sponsored placement and other channels. Facebook may not want some other company cashing in on this.
There is hope, though. Facebook struck a status update licensing deal with Yandex in 2010 to allow public posts from Pages to appear in the Russian search engine. In exchange Facebook got a widget on the Yandex home page that helped it sign up Russian users when it was still fighting off local social network VKontakte. Russian news outlet Ria Novosti also reported that Zuckerberg visited Yandex’s headquarters in Moscow in the Fall and held talks with management there.
Perhaps Facebook and Yandex could come to some sort of partnership around Wonder, such as a revenue share or allowing it to use Facebook data in exchange for more promotion of Facebook on Yandex. Other possibilities include Facebook buying the app from Yandex, cloning it the way Facebook copied Snapchat to build Poke, or working out a larger deal where Yandex assists Facebook with its search strategy. If Facebook was really feeling generous, it could just give Yandex permission to use the necessary data in Wonder.
No matter the outcome, sources say Yandex has proven there’s wondrous potential for Facebook in mobile search.
[Additional reporting by Ingrid Lunden]

Crunchbase

• YANDEX
• FACEBOOK

Company: Yandex

Website: yandex.ru

Launch Date: September 23, 1997

IPO: NASDAQ:YNDX

Yandex is an internet technologies company that operates in Russia, CIS and Turkey. It is the largest Russian and fifth-largest world internet search engine. Yandex is an acronym for the phrase Yet Another Indexer. As of December 2011, Yandex had 60.9% of the Russian search market (source: LiveInternet.ru). Yandex™s mission is to give the answer to the user anytime and anywhere. Company provides its services for desktop and mobile users and develops embedded solutions as well. The company specializes on highly-targeted sophisticated...

Credit : Tech Crunch

Facebook Adds Voice Messaging To Messenger For iOS and Android

Facebook’s next messaging move is all about voice. Today it released an update for its standalone Messenger for iOS and Android apps that lets users send up to one-minute voice messages. It’s also testing open source VoIP calling between Canadian iOS Messenger users that runs over a user’s existing data plan. Both power hands-free communication between friends, which helps drivers and reduces mobile typing.
The updates to the apps should be available in the app stores later today.

Social Voicemail

Most people hate voicemail so it may seem curious that Facebook is adding voice messaging to Messenger. Even with visual voice mail, many say they simply never listen to their cell phone’s answering machine. But most voicemail is just a longwinded way of saying “call me back.” Facebook sees a new opportunity in making voice messaging a seamless part of a conversation, not a replacement or a bridge to it.
With voice messaging in Messenger, you open a conversation (new or existing) and are shown a red “record” button. Similar to Facebook Poke’s video recording interface, you press and hold the button, talk or record a sound up to one minute in length, and then release the button to stop recording. You can then send the audio message, which appears in the conversation stream as a little wave form that can be listened to. Voice messages will also be available for listening from the web interface.
There are several use cases for audio messaging that text and photos in Messenger can’t cover. For example, if you’re driving, you could record a voice message hands-free to comply with the law but still communicate asynchronously. Sometimes you have to send someone a long message like a complicated set of instructions or driving directions that would be a pain to type. Now you can ramble them off into Messenger.

[Update: After a little hands on, I think the voice messaging works well. The interface is responsive, audio quality is decent, voice recordings are delivered quickly, and they're instantly available to listen on the web.]
Voice messaging could also be popular for things other than voice. You might record the sound of the lapping waves at the beach, or a clip of a concert. Kids without cellular or data plans might enjoy voice messaging within Facebook instead of having to use third-party apps, such as WhatsApp or Voxer. Voice messaging probably won’t get used too frequently, but it’s a nice addition that makes Facebook Messenger an even more complete app.
Soon I’d expect video messaging to be added. Facebook tells me it has no plans to add voice messaging to its website, as its focus right now is entirely on mobile.

FaceVoIP

Facebook is beginning to test VoIP audio calling in Canada to see if it should bring the feature to the U.S. and perhaps the rest of the world. Canada closely resembles the United States in demographics and usage trends, but is one-tenth the size, making it a smart testing ground. If it gains traction, Facebook will work on how to scale it for a bigger audience and would probably roll it out in the U.S. next, and possibly the web interface.
For now, though, only Canadian users of the latest version of Facebook Messenger for iOS can try VoIP. People can’t VoIP call Android users or people outside of Canada. The feature is a bit buried. Users have to click the “i” icon in the top right of a conversation to reveal a “Free Call” button. It’s not entirely free, though. It will burn data on a user’s existing carrier plan.

The new VoIP test is not built on Facebook’s existing Skype partnership which powered a briefly available limited test of voice calling on Facebook’s desktop site in January 2011. This indicates somewhat icier relations between Facebook and Skype’s owner Microsoft, which also powers a Bing search integration and display ads on Facebook. If the trend continues, Facebook might also look elsewhere for help with search.
Voice Messaging and VoIP could also be seen as Facebook taking on the default calling app on smartphones. Facebook wants to own social, and that means a lot more than the news feed and profile. Knowing who you’re close enough with to send voice recordings and calls helps it refine its relevancy-sorted content streams, too. If Facebook has its way, eventually you’d only use it for friend-to-friend communication. And with it now showing ads around the web inbox, starting to charge users to contact strangers, and more potential monetization around messages, it makes sense that Facebook wants to kill the phone part of the smartphone
The new updates to Facebook Messenger for iOS and Android are populating in the app stores soon, so if you don’t see the latest update, just wait a little while.

Credit : TechCrunch

Security Loophole In Facebook’s Camera App Allowed Hackers To Hijack Accounts Over WiFi

PSA to all Facebook Camera users on iOS: If you haven’t update you app in the past few days, update it now. The older version of the app, pre-1.1.2 and released before December 21, has a security loophole. When used over WiFi networks, malicious hackers can tap the network and hijack Camera users’ accounts, picking up information like email addresses and passwords in the process.
The white-hat hacker who ID’d the problem is Mohamed Ramadan, an Egypt-based security researcher and trainer with Attack-Secure who has also found and reported vulnerabilities for Apple, Google, and Etsy — which apparently also had the same loophole in its iOS app. Ramadan tells us that the issue lied in the Camera app’s Secure Sockets Layer certification, which was too open.
As he puts it, “The problem is the app accepts any SSL certification from any source, even evil SSL certifications and this enables any attacker to perform Man in The Middle Attack against anyone uses Facebook Camera App for IPhone. This means that the application doesn’t warn the user if someone in the same [WiFi network] trying to hijack his Facebook account.”
Testing his theory by using a proxy to listen in on a WiFi network, he was able to type in his username and password into the Camera app, and then see that information appear via the proxy.
Ramadan notes that he’s tested all Facebook apps and the rest appear to protect from this similar vulnerability. 

 

Credit : Tech Crunch

Facebook Tries Letting You Pay To Guarantee Message Delivery, Changes Messaging Privacy Settings

Sometimes you need to message a non-friend, and today Facebook starts testing if it can make a little money and cut spam by asking you to pay to ensure the recipient sees that message. Facebook’s also changing everyone’s privacy settings into dynamic filters that let “relevant” messages through. These moves address Facebook’s old settings that caused important messages to sometimes go unseen.

Previously, Facebook’s messaging privacy settings were cut and dry. You set your inbox to allow messages from everyone, friends of friends, or friends only. Any sender that didn’t qualify had their messages dumped in the “Other Inbox”, a little known sub-tab of the Inbox that most people rarely checked if ever. I had a friend who actually got a Facebook Message from a long-lost brother from the other side of the world but didn’t see it for six months because he wasn’t a friend of a friend.

Facebook’s trying to rectify this situation, and also make room for the new revenue stream it’s testing by replacing these hard settings with more flexible filters. Facebook is legally allowed to make this change to privacy settings because of the new language about messaging it put into its terms of service this month.

If you were set to accept messages from friends of friends or everyone, you’ll now have the “Basic Filtering” which means you’ll mostly see messages from friends and people you may know in you main Inbox. If you had restricted your Inbox to friends only, you’ll be switched onto the “Strict Filtering” which means you’ll mostly see messages from friends.

You’ll notice the word “mostly” in there. That gives Facebook the freedom to deliver messages to your main Inbox even if they’re from outside your preferred categories of senders if it thinks they’re highly relevant. For example, if you have the Strict Filtering setting and are in a group message thread with three friends and one non-friend, Facebook might allow that non-friend to reach your main Inbox because there’s a high likelihood you want to see their message.

The new filters help out with the new version of Facebook Messenger For Android that allows signups from people without Facebook accounts. If a non-Facebook user that has your phone number in their address book tries to message you, Facebook might let that through.

These filters also pave the way for Facebook’s new paid messaging system that it begins testing today with a very small percentage of users in the United States. The idea is that by letting people pay $1 or some other small fee, Facebook knows a message is important to the sender. The price also theoretically deters spam because conversion rates on spam messages are so low that having to pay to deliver them makes it very tough to earn money. Facebook is also capping the number of paid messages you can receive per week at one for now to reduce the potential for abuse.

Facebook explains that “Several commentators and researchers have noted that imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful.” Considering the frequency cap, and fact that most people won’t need this at all or very often, it’s unlikely to turn into a major revenue stream for Facebook if it’s ever rolled out to everyone.

So what do the new privacy settings and paid messages (if rolled out) really mean for users? Above you see the message Facebook is showing users. Most people will hardly notice the difference. Thanks to the dynamic filtering, you might see more important messages that would have been relegated to the Other Inbox

If you previously allowed Messages from everyone you might see a little less spam. The extra economic signal means Facebook can be stricter in classifying messages as spam and simply refuse to deliver them entirely.

Finally, if you’re somewhat of a public figure, a beautiful woman, or otherwise get a lot of unwanted messages, you can now be more confident about using a more defensive privacy setting like Strict Filtering without worry you’ll miss messages about people you care about. Random strangers won’t be able to get through. Meanwhile, someone who’s friends with many of your friends, was tagged in photos with you, or that Facebook somehow thinks you’ll want to hear from will be able to pass through the filter. And if they want to make sure you see the message, they could pay the fee.

Some users will surely be annoyed by both changes. Most people don’t want Facebook meddling with their privacy settings without express consent. Others will likely be angry that anyone with some money to spare can pester them with Messages.

In the end, these settings might actually help people but we’ll have to wait and see what their impact is, and whether users are able to understand their value through their fears about Facebook exploiting them for dollars. But if I had to comment on the announcement of the paid messaging test, I’d say Facebook didn’t do a clear enough job explaining that this is to deter spammers who are way too stingy to pay for a Facebook message when they could email you for free.

Credit : Tech Crunch

Rides : Mercedes-Benz thanks its 9 million Facebook fans

Mercedes-Benz has nine million Facebook fans. That's like every single member of genus Homo in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Dallas clicking the friend button. To throw its kisses to the crowd, the Stuttgart brand put together a video led by Finnish director, Anssi Määttä, that combines light painting and the CLS Shooting Brake.

Two isn't necessarily a trend but Ferrari also whipped up a video to thank its horde of virtual pals, of which it has an extra million on M-B. But this one from Mercedes it isn't just a "Danke," it's a "Danke schön." And then some.

 

Credit : Autoblog

Facebook Privacy Changes Recently Proposed Have Made Advocacy Groups Pretty Unhappy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Two privacy advocacy groups urged Facebook Inc on Monday to withdraw proposed changes to its terms of service that would allow the company to share user data with recently acquired photo-application Instagram, eliminate a user voting system and loosen email restrictions within the social network.

The changes, which Facebook unveiled on Wednesday, raise privacy risks for users and violate the company's previous commitments to its roughly 1 billion members, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.

"Facebook's proposed changes implicate the user privacy and terms of a recent settlement with the Federal Trade Commission," the groups said in a letter to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg that was published on their websites on Monday.

By sharing information with Instagram, the letter said, Facebook could combine user profiles, ending its practice of keeping user information on the two services separate.

Facebook declined to comment on the letter.

In April, Facebook settled privacy charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it had deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended. Under the settlement, Facebook is required to get user consent for certain changes to its privacy settings and is subject to 20 years of independent audits.

Facebook, Google and other online companies have faced increasing scrutiny and enforcement from privacy regulators as consumers entrust ever-increasing amounts of information about their personal lives to Web services.

Facebook unveiled a variety of proposed changes to its terms of service and data use polices on Wednesday, including a move to scrap a 4-year old process that can allow the social network's roughly 1 billion users to vote on changes to its policies.

If proposed changes generate more than 7,000 public comments during a seven-day period, Facebook's current terms of service automatically trigger a vote by users to approve the changes. But the vote is only binding if at least 30 percent of users take part, and two prior votes never reached that threshold.

The latest proposed changes had garnered more than 17,000 comments by late Monday.

Facebook also said last week that it wanted to eliminate a setting for users to control who can contact them on the social network's email system. The company said it planned to replace the "Who can send you Facebook messages" setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.

That change is likely to increase the amount of unwanted "spam" messages that users receive, the privacy groups warned on Monday.

Facebook's potential information sharing with Instagram, a photo-sharing service for smartphone users that it bought in October, flows from proposed changes that would allow the company to share information between its own service and other businesses or affiliates it owns.

The change could open the door for Facebook to build unified profiles of its users that include people's personal data from its social network and from Instagram, similar to recent moves by Google Inc.

In January, Google said it would combine users' personal information from its various Web services - such as search, email and the Google+ social network - to provide a more customized experience. The unified data policy raised concerns among some privacy advocates and regulators, who said it was an invasion of people's privacy.

"As our company grows, we acquire businesses that become a legal part of our organization," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an emailed statement on Monday.

"Those companies sometimes operate as affiliates. We wanted to clarify that we will share information with our affiliates and vice versa, both to help improve our services and theirs, and to take advantage of storage efficiencies," Noyes said.

 

Credit : Huffington Post/Reuters

Go Ahead, Post That Facebook Privacy Notice

That privacy notice you've seen posted on your friends' Facebook walls? It has no legal effect, but it may be a landmark for privacy online.

 

For the last couple of weeks, people on Facebook have been posting a jargon-laced "Privacy Notice" stating that their profiles were off-limits, for any use, and by anyone, without their permission. This Privacy Notice invokes irrelevant law, gets the facts wrong, and is powerless to modify the Facebook Terms and Conditions. It's not even well-written, as far as legal clauses go. In short, it is legal nonsense.
But you should post it — or something like it — on your Timeline anyway.
Before I explain why, let's look at the Privacy Notice.

For those of you who do not understand the reasoning behind this posting, Facebook is now a publicly traded entity. Unless you state otherwise, anyone can infringe on your right to privacy once you post to this site. It is recommended that you and other members post a similar notice as this, or you may copy and paste this version. If you do not post such a statement once, then you are indirectly ...allowing public use of items such as your photos and the information contained in your status updates.

PRIVACY NOTICE: Warning - any person and/or institution and/or Agent and/or Agency of any governmental structure including but not limited to the United States Federal Government also using or monitoring/using this website or any of its associated websites, you do NOT have my permission to utilize any of my profile information nor any of the content contained herein including, but not limited to my photos, and/or the comments made about my photos or any other "picture" art posted on my profile.
You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein. The foregoing prohibitions also apply to your employee, agent, student or any personnel under your direction or control.
The contents of this profile are private and legally privileged and confidential information, and the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by law.

UCC 1-103 1-308 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE

It's bunk. First, the fact that Facebook is now publicly traded does not change the company's rights and obligations to its user's information. What about UCC 1-103 1-308? That's a provision of the Uniform Commercial Code, a uniform act that most states have adopted in its entirety or used as a template for their own laws governing commercial transactions. It's also useless here. While 1-308 discusses the reservation of rights, you would not be able to invoke it here to undo the standard Facebook legal relationship.
Finally, the Facebook Terms and Conditions, which you all surely read before signing up and using Facebook, expressly establishes when, how, and by whom it can be amended. Unsurprisingly, it does not include "amendment by status update." (Status Update: Give me one billion dollars, Zuckerberg.) Here is Section 13 of Facebook's Terms and Conditions, the amendment clause:

13. Amendments
We can change this Statement if we provide you notice (by posting the change on the Facebook Site Governance Page) and an opportunity to comment. To get notice of any future changes to this Statement, visit our Facebook Site Governance Page and become a fan.
For changes to sections 7, 8, 9, and 11 (sections relating to payments, application developers, website operators, and advertisers), we will give you a minimum of three days notice. For all other changes we will give you a minimum of seven days notice. All such comments must be made on the Facebook Site Governance Page.
If more than 7,000 users comment on the proposed change, we will also give you the opportunity to participate in a vote in which you will be provided alternatives. The vote shall be binding on us if more than 30% of all active registered users as of the date of the notice vote.
We can make changes for legal or administrative reasons, or to correct an inaccurate statement, upon notice without opportunity to comment.

You want to change your relationship with Facebook? In the short term, you can participate in the amendment process as outlined in the Terms and Conditions. Facebook recently proposed changes to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and its Data Use Policy, and is currently holding a vote until June 8 on the changes. If more than 30 percent of all active registered users vote — by some counts, that's nearly 300 million people, or the entire population of the United States — it will be binding on Facebook. And, since Americans are so great at democracy, I have every faith in our ability to amend the Facebook Terms and Conditions through this process.

But in the long term, periodic privacy outbursts from the Facebook-using public — like the ill-conceived, viral Privacy Notice — may contribute to judges or lawmakers identifying a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in our lives online. Once recognized, a reasonable "expectation of privacy" would curtail the government's ability to investigate our Facebook activities. And that expectation of privacy would likely spill over into many civil and commercial contexts as well.
Do you want a Facebook that does not mine your private life for profit and a government that cannot track your every move online? Then you should participate in the Facebook vote. Share your bizarro Privacy Notices. And keep demanding a right to privacy.

Credit : BuzzFeed

Rides : Mercedes-Benz C-Class AMG Sports Package teased on Facebook

Mercedes-Benz has given the world a peek at the upcoming C-Class AMG Sports Package, thanks to a few quick photos on the company's USA Facebook page. Buyers who opt for the kit will get to enjoy seven-spoke, eighteen-inch alloy wheels outside, while the cabin comes decked in all sort of niceties. Red seat belts pair with MB sport seats hemmed in red contrast stitching, and a flat-bottom steering wheel replaces the standard tiller. Otherwise, details are scarce about when we can expect to see the package show up on order sheets or how much it will cost buyers when it does arrive.

The 2013 Mercedes-Benz C-Class starts at $35,350, plus a $905 destination fee. You can find out more by heading over to the Mercedes-Benz USA consumer site or checking out the company's Facebook page. 

 

Credit : Autoblog

How A Company Takes Full Advantage Of Access To Your Facebook Information

When you grant a company access to your Facebook profile, do you think about how it’ll use the info you’ll be handing over on an ongoing basis? Probably not. When you click that Facebook Connect button, you’re probably just thinking, “Awesome, that makes it easier to sign onto that website.” What you should actually be thinking is, “This company may now be mining everything I say and do from here on out to figure out what to sell to me.”
At a conference organized by data warehouse company Teradata this week, one Japanese company laid out exactly how it’s leveraging insights from Facebook to better market to its customers and increase sales. Nissen Co., LTD is a catalog company that sends out over 200 million food, clothing, and consumer good catalogs in Japan each year. “We customize the page content for each customer,” said Shigeru Kakimaru of Nissen’s marketing team. The catalogs people now get in the mail reflect products chosen for them based on their Facebook chatter, though the customers probably don’t realize it.

Through analysis of its customers’ Facebook data, Nissen can incorporate “psychographics” into its marketing. It knows about a customer’s “life stage” (whether they’re married or unmarried, pregnant, dieting, planning a party, etc.) “household” (if they have a child, an aging parent, a pet, a condo, etc.) and “personality” (are they into volunteering, fortune-telling, food, traveling, sports, running, etc?). Apparently, fortune telling is big in Japan?
“Consumers now post a huge amount of data about themselves, their activities, and their feelings,” said Kakimaru through a translator, noting that the amount of information companies can collect will grow in the future thanks to smartphone sensors and NFC technology. “We can learn the life background of our customers — their lifestyle and psychology. We can then target our catalogs accordingly. And we can predict when someone needs a product based on what they say on social media.”
It’s rare to hear a company speak candidly about the extent to which they can mine Facebook once given access by its customers. Perhaps it’s easier to do so when you’re giving a presentation in the U.S. and the majority of your customers are in Japan.

“There’s nothing easier to find from social networking data than that someone has a pet,” said Kakimaru, noting that people with pets tend to talk about them a lot on social networks. He mentioned one test of the company’s methods using a control group of female customers; one group got regular non-Facebook-personalized catalogs for three months while the other group got personalized ones that wound up offering them pet products rather than female apparel and resulted in higher sales.
The company also benefits from the richness of the Facebook social graph and the ability to pull information about its customers’ friends.
“We can see who their friends are and recommend birthday gifts for them based on their interests,” said Kakimaru. “We can relate at an emotional level.”

 The permissions a Nissen app asks for

Nissen gets access to this info for those customers who choose to sign in using their Facebook or Twitter account. A customer who uses Facebook Connect, for example, gives Nissen authorization to download info from their profiles, and get access to their list of friends, profile updates, and photos (depending on privacy settings).” All that info gets sucked up on an ongoing basis and dumped into the company’s Teradata warehouse.
The key to mining the data is “True Teller,” a text mining tool that “turns yarn into gold,” says Nissen tech lead Shinichi Yokote. “Its powerful filtering turns seemingly random data into strategic value. The data from Facebook is useless unless you refine it. You have to drill down through 20,000 or 50,000 data points to find the valuable data.”
Such as you talking about your cat. Or mentioning Nissen. The company “values customers who buy once a year and say positive things about the company on social media more than a person who buys three times a year.”
“It’s important not to overwhelm or alienate the customer,” said Kakimaru seeming to echo Target’s “don’t be too creepy about what you know” mentality.
He mentioned Japan’s strong culture of privacy being a concern for them, giving as an example of the privacy expectations there that people are generally uncomfortable talking too much about themselves. “It is dangerous to overly exploit the information too much now, but we think this will change in the future.”

Nissen fears that a feeling of invasiveness would make customers dislike the company. “That’s the exact opposite of what we’re trying to accomplish by doing this [mining],” said Kakimaru. “Unlike in the U.S. where we would fear being litigated against, we are more concerned about customers being upset by use of psychographics.”
I asked which information Nissen regards as being too sensitive to use for now. Kakimaru says Nissen doesn’t use sexual orientation; relationship status; or a person’s hometown. That last one is a “cultural thing.” “There’s historically been racism based on where you’re from [in Japan],” he explained.
He put religion and political views in the gray zone category.
“We could use these but are steering away for now,” he said. “That’s the same everywhere, right? Best to avoid politics and religion.”

Credit : Forbes Magazine

Five Ways Small Businesses Can Make the Most of Facebook

Small business owners are usually stretched pretty thin in terms of time and budget. Most businesses want to thrive on Facebook but can't devote the kind of time they'd really want to make an impact. Try spending about 10 minutes a day on your Facebook page for regular upkeep. It's always a good rule of thumb to expect the initial setup of your page to be 80 percent of your Facebook time commitment and then the other 20 percent for consistent updates and maintenance 10 minutes a day.
Why devote 10 minutes a day to Facebook? There are many reasons why, but most importantly Facebook can help strengthen your relationships with your customers. The smaller your business, the more important these connections can be to help keep your company thriving. Highlighting the human factor of your company is what creates strong relationships between customers and your business. Facebook helps facilitate these emotional connections on a larger scale before or after an in store visit, phone call or other customer interaction.

Here are five ways to make the most of your time on Facebook:
1. Use Photos to Share Your Products and Services: Photos are the most effective means of driving engagement on Facebook, according to a study by Buddy Media, because people are innately visual and Facebook caters to this fact. The more quality interactions customers have with your photos on Facebook, the more word of mouth marketing works to spread the news of your business to your customers and their Facebook friends. People are innately intrigued by what they can't typical see, so give them a behind the scenes look at what's happening at your business. Share photos of your processes, like making a coffee if you own a cafe or repairing a sweater if you're a seamstress. Also, showcase your employees (preferably smiling) to further bring attention to the human aspect of your business. Often businesses are discouraged because they don't have an expensive SLR camera, but all it takes today for a stunning photo is shooting with the camera on your smartphone. Snap away and begin posting to see what is and isn't resonating with your audience.
2. Facebook Offers: Advertise your online or instore sales using Facebook's new ad unit called Offers. This ad allows a business owner to highlight their existing promotions within the Facebook's ecosystem to a larger audience than they would be able to regularly reach when posting. This is a paid ad, but the first ad is free for small businesses. After your first ad has run, the price is dependant on how many people you wish your offer to reach. These ads are relatively inexpensive and can cost as little as $10 to reach 5,000 to 9,000 relevant people. Think of this feature as pay to play reach for your business.
Facebook suggests the following quick tips for making the most of Offers:
● Give high quality and exclusive offers.
● Re-share offer post every three days; do not post a new one.
● Pin the offers post to top of your page.
● Offer text should be short with a clear call to action; leave out marketing jargon.
● Images should be colorful and simple.

3. Install Free Apps on Your Page: Every Facebook page has a banner displaying four tabs at the top right, below your cover photo. One of these tabs, which can't be changed, is the photos tab that highlights all the photos shared on your Facebook page up to this point. What you can change and customize for your business are the other three tabs to the right of the photo tab which allow you to highlight applications of your choice, free or paid. It's not required, but it's certainly recommended that you add apps to these tabs to provide a more engagingexperience. Whether you wish to showcase your upcoming events, Instagram photos, tweets, email sign up form or whatever else, there's plenty of free applications like these in this sentence to choose from. Start by searching the Facebook App Center for apps you'd like to addto your page and if you come up short, use a search engine to find a Facebook app (since Facebook search can be unreliable at times). For example, search: facebook email app in Google, Bing or Yahoo.
4. Schedule Posts from Facebook: Your time is valuable; maybe you don't have 10 minutes a day to spare for Facebook everyday. Facebook allows page owners to schedule posts to be published at a later date. Set aside time to schedule posts at the beginning or end of the week to make sure you're giving your business proper coverage on Facebook, while saving yourself time. This feature allows admins to schedule links, photos, status update and videos ahead of time. At this time, you can't schedule photo albums, events, questions, offers or milestones. Begin by choosing what type of content you wish to add to your Page, write text for it and the choose the small clock icon in the lower-left of the sharing tool. Choose the future year, month, day, hour and minute you'd like your post to go live and then click schedule to finalize your posting.



You can delete scheduled posts from your activity log but you can't edit them, so make sure you're satisfied with your scheduled posts before finalizing. This is a perfect tool to get ahead on your Facebook posts. Be sure to return to your page each day, to respond to any feedback on your Facebook page.
5. Interact with Customers Right from Your Smartphone: When a person posts on your wall or on a post shared on your Page, its extremely important to respond with insightful information in a timely manner when appropriate. Answering questions, responding to compliments, dealing with complaints and removing spam is one of the most important ways to give your audience the best experience possible on Facebook. Your community is made up of your current and potential customers, supporting them in any way you can will help strengthen their relationship with your business. Satisfaction helps breed loyalty. If your customers feel both loyal to your business, its more likely you'll have a strong, long-term connection with them.







The best way to manage feedback on Facebook page with limited time is by using the Page Manager app. Download this app on your iPhone to answer private messages, wall posts, comments on your posts or to deal with any other community management tasks. The app allows you to update your Page and check Page insights as well but the best way to utilize this app is for viewing your notifications in real time to ensure you're handling your customer's needs as they arise.

 

Credit : Huffington Post

Facebook Tops 1 Billion Active Users

 
10:28 a.m. | Updated Adding information on user activity and demographics.
A million users isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion users.
Facebook on Thursday announced that it had topped one billion active users, meaning users who visited the site within a month. Although a few companies can claim to have had more than a billion customers, Facebook is the first social network to hit that number.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive and founder, made the announcement in a blog post on the company’s Web site.
“If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.”
In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Mr. Zuckerberg said the company celebrated the milestone by watching a countdown clock in its offices.
“Well, just everyone came together and counted down,” he told the magazine. “Then we all went back to work. We have this ethos where we want to be a culture of builders, right?”
Facebook shared some information on what its billion users have been doing on the site. People have used the “Like” button more than 1.1 trillion times since it was added in February 2009. There have been more than 140 billion friend connections. And since the fall of 2005, nearly 220 billion photos have been uploaded to the site. Facebook also said it has 600 million mobile users.
For advertisers, those numbers might seem less important than the median age of Facebook’s one billion users who joined in the past week: 22. That is a prime market for advertisers and marketers. And those users are getting younger. Facebook said in 2008 that the median age was 26.
The Facebook story has been one for the ages: A Harvard University dropout who started a multibillion-dollar company in his dorm room that eventually became the largest social network on the planet. But the story has also had its share of troubles too.
Mr. Zuckerberg has been dragged through legal suits over the ownership and idea of Facebook. The company has also dealt with dozens of privacy issues and run-ins with the Federal Trade Commission.
One billion users might be more than just a nice badge to stick on the fridge. After Facebook’s lackluster initial public offering, showing that the company is still growing might help to lift Wall Street’s confidence in the company.
Mr. Zuckerberg concluded his announcement by saying, “I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too.”
That leaves only six billion to go.

Credit : NY Times

Like My Page : Craig Mills Official On Facebook

Like My Page on FaceBook. For venue dates, Blog info and new music!!

facebook.com/CraigMillsEargasmSessions

Facebook Slides Again

Shares of Facebook FB -3.17% continued to slide amid a Reuters report that an analyst for one of its banks had trimmed his outlook for the social-network company's revenue just ahead of the deal.

The stock changed hands at $32.02 in early trade, off its low of $31.51 but still down $2.01, or 5.9%, on the day. Shares had tumbled 11% Monday and are now down 16% from the the initial public offering price of $38.

 

The news "zipper" headline about Facebook stock's decline, in New York's Times Square on Monday.

The action by the Morgan Stanley MS +5.27% analyst, which Reuters said was relayed to some of the bank's major clients as meetings for the IPO were held, came as a surprise to many potential investors so close to the stock's debut. It said the cut came after Facebook released an updated prospectus ahead of the share sale that cautioned about revenue-growth challenges presented by a shift to mobile devices.
Underwriters J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. also revised their estimates, according to the report.
Spokespeople for Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs declined to comment immediately on the matter. A J.P. Morgan spokeswoman wasn't available to comment.
Investment-bank analysts are supposed to be independent from the side of the bank that underwrites IPOs, a rule that would bar Morgan Stanley from swaying its analyst's commentary. At the same time, underwriters are prohibited from publicizing their sell-side analysis so soon after the offering.
Analysts from other firms this week also drew attention to risks posed by Facebook's slowing revenue growth and less-profitable mobile business.
Monday's selloff came partly because some investors who were allotted more shares than they had expected pared their holdings. The stock fell to $33 in early trading before paring the loss to end at $34.03.
The shares debuted Friday in a day marred by technology problems that affected trading in millions of shares and ended that day up just 23 cents.
Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. Chief Executive Bob Greifeld, in remarks at the company's annual meeting Tuesday, acknowledged "mistakes were made" with the debut of Facebook.
A lengthy delay before the stock opened involved millions of shares worth of trading going unconfirmed and brokers were left in the dark for hours before they knew the status of their trading in the eagerly anticipated stock.
Mr. Greifeld reminded investors that Facebook's IPO was the largest ever in terms of valuation at the time of the offering, and the initial trade in the stock was the biggest Nasdaq OMX had ever handled.

Credit : Wall Street Journal

Rides : Check Out The Facebook-themed Porsche Cayman S

The German based automaker Porsche has officially unveiled the Facebook-themed Cayman S model, in order for the company to celebrate their two millionth Facebook fan.

Honestly I don’t understand this Facebook “hysteria” or even the need to get Facebook applications in your car and I’m not that old, but this “trend” is reaching a whole new level everyday until it will probably crash under its own weight. But anyway, besides being an ugly car even without that weird paint on it, the Porsche Cayman S Facebook-themed is apparently a pride for the car manufacturer and even if this might actually be the most hideous creation which this automaker has ever done, it will be displayed at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart.

“When the Porsche Facebook community reached 2 million milestone, we decided to dedicate our celebration to you. We asked our Facebook community to submit their profile pictures to be part of a mosaic on a Porsche model”, as the automaker is saying in its official press release. “We used the collected Facebook portraits to recreate the 917 livery to be placed on a mystery model for display in the Porsche Museum until January 27.”

The 917 K, which has won the company’s first overall Le Mans victory, was the basis for this ugly ride and besides its white exterior with the red mosaic, this unique Cayman (thank God there’s only one) has nothing else special on it. If you want to see it closely (and you’d better have a good reason for this), the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart will host it until the 27th of January.

Rides : Audi releases special edition S5 on Facebook

Facebook has rapidly emerged as one of the most visited websites on the internet. So it only makes sense that automakers would launch their new cars there, right?

Audi evidently thinks so. And so it has launched a new special edition U.S. model of its sexy S5 coupe on the popular social media site. The model is characterized by a unique shade of dark silver, special five-spoke wheels, a two-tone white and black leather interior, and of course, special badging.

Only 125 examples will be offered, though specific pricing parameters have not been immediately revealed.

Social Network : Facebook rolls out Timeline feature worldwide

Get ready for a This Is Your Life-style recap available online, as Facebook's Timeline feature is now out of beta and available to all users worldwide. Originally announced during the f8 conference back in September, it wraps up all the information you've posted, friendships you've made and embarrassing photos you were tagged in, in a neat, date organized package. If you're worried it may uncover some things better left private -- and posted years ago before you were more savvy about social media -- you can enable the feature and still wait a week before it goes public for viewing by others. Currently timelines are visible on the main site, via the recently updated Android client and the mobile version of the site. If you want to turn it on right way, head to the Introducing Timeline page and click Get It Now.

Update: Facebook has just rolled rolled out a fresh version of its Android app that you'll need to grab for Timeline access there, the change log (after the break) also mentions changes including access to games & apps, new push notifications and a new photo viewing experience.

What's in this version:

1. Navigate anywhere, fast: Get to your groups, apps, pages, and settings with a single press
2. Search and you will discover: Look through friends, subscribers, apps, and pages
3. See your friends tags on pictures and zoom: New photo viewing experience
4. Faster notifications: Get alerted in real time with new push notifications
5. Games & Apps: Play games and access your favorite apps on the go
6. Access to mobile timeline (If you already have a timeline)
7. Access to friend lists and subscriptions

Boost Mobile lets you refill your account on Facebook, allows gifting to and from friends

So busy playing networking on Facebook that you can't find time to refill your Boost Mobile account? Your little conundrum has been solved, as the prepaid carrier has set up an app on the social network called Re-Boost for this very purpose. It satisfies the obvious need of filling up your own account at your own free will, but it also hasn't neglected the social aspect: you can refill a friend's account as a gift or even scrounge a few bucks off your connections by sending a request to your network. It's definitely a unique take on an otherwise inconsequential task; perhaps those high school buddies you never talk to would be willing to part with a buck or two in exchange for some Farmville animals. 

 

Press Release

Boost Mobile Launches New 'Re-Boost' Facebook Application

First application to be launch by a U.S. mobile carrier that allows customers to add funds directly to their wireless account via Facebook

IRVINE, Calif. – Boost Mobile, ranked Highest in Customer Service Performance and Purchase Experience among Non-Contract Wireless Providers by J.D. Power and Associates1, is giving its customers an early holiday gift this year – the ability to add money to their Boost Mobile account using the Re-Boost App directly through their Facebook page.

Launching today, the new "Boost Mobile Re-Boost Application" will enable a Facebook subscriber to:

-Add money to their Boost Mobile account via Facebook.
-Request a Re-Boost gift from their network of Facebook friends, which is asking friends for some extra funds to fuel your phone.
-Request a Re-Boost gift by sending a customized email to a friend, which is asking one friend personally for some help.
-Send a Re-Boost gift to a fellow Boost Mobile Facebook subscriber, since it's better to give than to receive.
-Review the last 10 transactions (Facebook Re-Boost requests and gifts).

The Boost Mobile Re-Boost Application can be downloaded to the Facebook subscriber's account by entering "Boost" in the search bar and selecting the "Re-Boost" application from the search results.

At The Movies : The Social Network 2 - A World Without Facebook (Fan Made)

Social Network : PayPal Facebook app lets you send money and greetings to friends, only takes 2.9-percent cut of your 'free' e-card

Well, this certainly seems like a no-brainer for PayPal. The company just launched a Facebook app that lets you send money to anyone on your friends list, with the usual list of terms and conditions in tow. After logging into Facebook and authorizing the app, you'll be able to use PayPal to transfer funds to individuals that you're connected with (who also have PayPal accounts, of course), adding a layer of security to the notoriously fraud-laden online payment service.

Payments are free to send and receive, but only if they're funded using a bank account with both parties in the U.S. Want to use a credit or debit card instead? PayPal will collect 2.9 percent (either from the sender or recipient), with a 30-cent processing fee to boot. And if you're sending funds abroad, fees range from 0.5 to 3.9 percent, depending on a variety of factors. A rather comprehensive collection of e-cards helps soften the blow if a fee applies, and includes selections for just about every occasion. Fourth of July coming up? Let's top up that fireworks fund. So dig up those account and routing numbers and get ready to stick some virtual cash in a virtual card