Facebook, Social Media News & Practices

Facebook is upping its range of advertising possibilities. The popular social media site is testing Sponsored Results, which are ads that show up in the Facebook search area.

Start off Summer with a new gig -- we've got a shopping list of hot jobs for you to browse. Our featured jobs list is a great collection of opportunities spanning specialties and continents. Here's who's hiring this week (and if you're hiring, post your open jobs here).

 Apple's shunning of Facebook from the native OS feature set was never going to last. And, it looks like everyone has kissed and made up, as the latest Facebook API beta integrates at the OS level for iPhones and iPads, letting app developers have greater levels of social interaction in their products. 

Could the way Facebook measures engagement be improved? The folks at Ticular think so. They expressed their suggested improvements in what has become standard format these days -- an infographic.

Customers are responding to Facebook’s new mobile ads with the equivalent of “likes,” according to data from two new studies. As reported by MobiADNews, initial figures on clickthrough rate (CTR) and effective cost per mile (eCPM, with “mile” meaning a thousand views) give mobile advertisers plenty to like, as well.

Facebook and Yahoo announced Friday they have settled their major patent dispute. The settlement will result in an expanded relationship between the companies, including a new advertising partnership and an agreement to extend and expand their distribution arrangements.

There seems to be a lot of chatter around Microsoft's purchase of Yammer. There is clearly much to talk about here especially what it means for the addictive business narcotic known as SharePoint. This topic is not that interesting to me as I find this acquisition to be one more step towards the inevitable demise of licensed application software for businesses.

Your photographs may well be all over Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr and on Twitter. But Microsoft still wants to be the center of your digital world, as it shows off an improved app for Windows 8 that will help manage all those snaps and images. 

Facebook has found a new way to make money. The company has announced a subscription pricing model that may create a recurring revenue stream.

Facebook has a new Face -- and it can recognize yours. On Monday, the social networking giant announced that it had agreed to acquire Face.com, which provides the face-recognition technology used by Facebook.

I’ve had conversations with representatives from major brands and agencies who will tell me they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a national ad campaign, but then balk at spending $30 a month on their social media efforts. Companies seem to have no problem spending money on traditional methods like coupon books, newspaper ads, mailing lists, radio and television spots, etc., but when it comes to social media, they somehow can’t get their wallets open. While you may be able to use Facebook or Twitter for free -- advertising, engaging, and tracking are not.

Among all the shiny new announcements at WWDC, Apple's social service Ping looks like it was left to exit via the back doors, without so much as a goodbye wave. But what will Apple be looking to add for users with the next iTunes upgrade?

Facebook promised its App Center last month and has now launched the shop front for web and download apps. It caters for both Facebook desktop and mobile users, with iOS and Android users getting some 600 apps to try.

Start off Summer with a new gig -- we've got a shopping list of hot jobs for you to browse. Our featured jobs list is a great collection of opportunities spanning specialties and continents. Here's who's hiring this week (and if you're hiring, post your open jobs here).

General Motors caused a tremor last month when it pulled its paid banner ads from Facebook. Because the timing of the news was so close to the social networking site’s IPO, there wasn’t much talk about what the world’s largest automaker’s decision might signal about the effectiveness of ads on social media as a whole, or whether other brands are likely to reconsider their social spends.

But with Facebook’s stock hitting an all-time low yesterday (it closed at US$ 26.90, the lowest price since the stock began trading at US$ 38 on May 18), some say the tremor has turned into a full-blown earthquake. It comes as a shock to many that petabytes of big, personal data don’t easily translate to dollars.